Attorney for the Damned: A Lawyer's Life with the Criminally Insane

I found this book to be very interesting and somewhat educational. The author, Denis Woychuk, is honest about his own feelings, and he has a pretty unique story to tell. Attorneys for mentally ill people, people who have also been charged with a crime, are different from other attorneys in that they work for the public sector, rather than the private sector. Woychuk is employed by the State of New York, to advocate for patients in the psychiatric wards holding people suspected of a crime, usually serious, but not always. Woychuk confesses that he cannot actually always believe that his clients should be released. Yet, he has to advocate for them, that is his precise job, that's why the State has employed him. He tells an interesting story about interviewing for a District Attorney job, early in his career. One of the interviewers, a D.A. herself, asked him if he would ever have doubts in litigating a suspected criminal. Woychuk told her he would have, that it was only human to occasionally have doubts about the actual guilt of the accused individual. The D.A. said no, she never had such doubts, and intimated that he would therefore not be a real good District Attorney. He didn't get that job. I don't know any D.A.'s personally, here in California or in New York or elsewhere, but it does seem like they would have to take a hard line toward justice. They cannot admit doubts, or they would always be doubting. Like Descartes? Or Thomas? This would also seem to say something about our system of "justice." Even D.A.'s are human, but apparently, the best ones prefer to act more like robots, because, quite simply, it's functional for them in their career niches. Wishy-washy law enforcement people just don't make the system look good. But is there a happy medium? Woychuk intimates that he has tried to find that happy medium in his own career. Anyway, Woychuk doubts, but he still does his best. He literally hates at least one of his clients, a fellow who was abused as a child and then starts acting funny in adulthood, whispering to a teenage boy. The fellow, Woychuk calls him Derrick Diesel (most of the names are changed "to protect the innocent") is released from the psychiatric hospital, with Woychuk's strategic help, after the boy commits suicide. Then Diesel goes on to hurt other people, and Woychuk quite naturally feels a sense of profound guilt, since he was part of the reason, maybe the entire reason, Diesel made it back to the street. Well, you can see how Woychuk's story, all entirely true (we can safely assume), can really make you think, like, "What would I do in such a situation?" I don't know if I could handle such a job. Could you? Well, we're not all called to be "attorneys for the damned." I guess few people will read this book. It's only in hardback, of course, and it is somewhat localized, since all the events occur in New York. Still, the feelings and the problems are national and even worldwid

This book is an interesting look at a side of the "criminal justice" system that is rarely, if ever, examined from the point of view of this book. There are a number of books regarding the criminally insane written by doctors,and by "true crime" writers but this is the first I have ever seen written by, and from the perspective of an attorney.The writing is well done, and the book is easy to read. It isn't written in legalese so that anyone can read it and enjoy it. The author did a wonderful job of presenting a variety of cases and was not shy about his hesitancy to deal with certain of those cases. He also provided some interesting insights into the problems faced by the "criminally insane", the attorneys who represent them and the system and offered a number of solutions to these problems.This is a book well worth reading, particularly if you are interested in mental health or criminal justice.

I've just finished reading Denis Woychuk's book, Attorney For The Damned, and I must warn you, make sure you have plenty of free time on your hands before you start reading this book, because once you start, you won't be able to stop. We Americans like to think that we have a good system of criminal justice, but this book shows how frightfully easy it is for innocent people to be locked away in mental hospitals because of a few simple misunderstandings. (For example, the patient says, "Doc, I was railroaded in here", and the psychiatrist writes, "Patient has delusions of arriving here by train.") The book also shows how horrifyingly easy it is for incredibly dangerous criminals to be set free because of careless mistakes. (A man who had committed two rapes and two murders, and was still considered extremely dangerous, was set free because a prosecutor forgot to show up for a hearing!) The book also raises troubling questions about how we make the distinction between religious beliefs and psychotic delusions, how some newspapers sensationalize stories about mentally ill people who commit ghastly crimes, and the terrible burden that our adversarial system of justice places on idealistic lawyers who want to do what's best for society, but are required to represent the wishes of the client. In the final chapter, Woychuk offers some statistics and opinions, and gives us hope that perhaps we will eventually succeed in finding better ways to deal with violent criminals. For further reading, I would recommend The Defense Never Rests, by F. Lee Bailey, and The Crime of Punishment, by Karl Menninger.