I give you my child

Her hair is long, fiery red and curly, just as unmanageable as mine. She sits in front of me at the office, and tries to get the words that come out of her mouth to sound coherent, but her uninterrupted sobbing makes for a difficult conversation. Her 19 year old son sits next to her, addled between looking like a wanna-be bad-ass gang member and a scaredy cat looking at a 15-year prison term with a 7 year prison offer on the table.

We talk about the case, the evidence, the gang evidence, the gun used, the forensic evidence, ballistics, Gun Shot Residue, the "admission" signed by the client, the video showing the shooting, the field identification cards... We talk about his age, his lack of prior brush with law enforcement, his immigrant family and working parents. His successful siblings... and the path that this young punk has chosen.

"It's very simple", i say to this 19 year old whose innocent childish eyes betray the menacing facial hair covering his face. "i am not your mother. i don't have time for your excuses, or bullshit. Don't waste my time if you're not gonna listen to me. But if you want me to represent you, you gonna have to man up and do as i say. If you don't, i'll break your knee caps and will make you cry. This is the day you decide whether you gonna clean up your shit and say goodbye to the gangs, drugs and your street life or you gonna end up living in the shadows as a gang member. Which one is it??"

Before he has the time to answer, mom says: "I give you my son... please do what you can".

Nine months of fighting in Court, 9 months of motions, conferences and setting up a defense. 9 months of fighting the DA, and the best that we have on the table is a 3 year state prison offer.

In the meanwhile, he has enrolled and continuing with his college education. He has a full time job, and has moved to a better neighborhood outside of gang territory and lives with his girlfriend. He is dressed up in slacks and a sweater, and is clean shaven.

We can't take the offer. Prison will make him a full fledged gang member. I can't go to trial either. I will lose as i have no defense. I ask for a chamber conference with the Judge, and try to explain to the Court why he should be given a chance at probation so that he can eventually reduce his felonies and strikes and clean his record. I explain his immigrant parents. I explain the 19 year old's life. and i find myself welling up and becoming emotional.

"Your honor, i have a 19 year old" i say... "but for the grace of God, it could have been my child. Give him the chance to prove himself and yet the rope to hang himself. Give him the choice to redeem himself. I will stand by him and my office will provide him will all sorts of support services. Give him a probationary sentence. I will deliver a respectful member of the community to you".

My client pled open to the charges today. He faces a maximum of 15 years if he violates. But if he does well for the next 5 years, the court will reduce his felonies to misdemeanors, his strikes will fall by the wayside, and he'll be able to clean up his record.

He won't do any jail time. He won't do prison time. He will remain in school and finish his education and will become a fully integrated member of the community.

As we walk out of court, mom and dad and my client hug me and sob. I look at him and say: "Don't disappoint me" and i walk away unable to hold back my tears. My thoughts are with my own teen age sons. I thank you boys for teaching me love and patience, for making me understand life and teaching me the power of communication and forgiveness. I thank you for showing me the challenges of your generation and the avenues to deal with it. And most importantly, i thank you for making me a better mother so that i can be a better advocate for my clients...

And to you mothers out there who have trusted me with your teenagers. Thank you for sharing your kids with me and allowing me the opportunity to be a part of their wondrous life. I have hundreds of children out there, who have risen up to the challenge, and made exceptional members of the society from the wreckage of their arrests. Thank you for making my job an incredibly rewarding career....

Namaste

3/20/2017

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law

A Professional Corporation
15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010
Encino, Ca  91436
ph: 818-986-6222
Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger

http://www.alalehkamran.com/

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THE DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS

At the center of every single major epiphany of my life, has always lain a client whose life was placed in my hands.

I am once again walking towards the Inmate Visiting Area.  The cement floors are grey, smooth and polished to a shine.  The silence of this corridor is pregnant with pain and despair.  As I walk down this hallway which is perhaps the length of a football field, I find my breath narrowing in my lungs as it makes it way up to the back of my throat. 

I slow down, pull up my breath from my stomach and stop in my step.    I close my eyes while I roll my shoulders, pull my shoulders back, and breathe deep into the lungs…  The air in county jail is laden with a heavy dark element that enters the human soul and grabs the light within for sustenance and survival.  “Breathe” I tell myself.

The muffled and muted noise of steel rolling doors opening and closing periodically can be heard through the walls of this giant detention facility. The only constant is the white noise of the air conditioning which blows icy air with an unremitting persistence.   The hallway stretches longer under the clippity clop of my heels, one of which is worn to the metal creating a bad syncopated rhythm.

Hundreds of empty pinkish beige plastic chairs line the walls. Like the cemetery, there is a presence.  Yet no one can be seen…  Today is not public visiting day.  But as I walk down, I see them, I see their faces, I hear their voices, I feel them inside my bones… The little girls with their curls all fancied up in ribbons, the little boys wearing their lighted up sneakers, the wives, the baby-mamas, the girlfriends, with their fabulous manicures, their lipsticks, their meticulously applied make up, the Sunday dresses made for church, worn with a world of expectations, hope, and dreams on visiting day move invisibly around me in this hallway.

I am still walking down this long corridor….  And finally arrive at Unit 800.  “Turn left”, they told me at the security check point.  I walk into a beehive of compartmentalized glass booths each equipped with a telephone and a short stationary metal stool… I sit and wait for my client to come.  The graffiti etched on the chipped paint of the booth chronicles monograms belonging to shattered lives, tragedies, hopes, love, deceit, failure, survival, resilience and faith.

He walks in.  He has jet black eyes, deep set in the bone, with dark circles under as if they were lakes gulping in the moon’s reflection.  He sits down, flashes a huge smile and picks up the phone from behind the glass pane.

We talk. We discuss strategy.  We discuss defenses.  And we discuss the harsh realities of life, of the possibilities and probabilities laying ahead in the case.  Do we roll the dice and risk losing and getting a 150-year prison sentence?  Do we take the offer that’s in front of us?  He is 32 years old now, and by time he is done with the proposed offer, he will be in his 60’s. 

How does a man end up here?  What child ever dreams of growing up with ambitions of spending a lifetime behind bars?  I am lost in thought as he talks about trivial details of the case.  I raise my hand, palm facing out towards the glass pane, and wordlessly ask him to stop talking. 

“What’s your earliest memory from your childhood?” I ask.  The businesslike expression in his face changes to a somber one with quizzical furled eyebrows.  Pain washes up in his black eyes.  He looks down and inaudibly says on the other side of the phone:  “my father kicking me in front of the bathroom door”…

“How old were you?” I ask. 

“4 years old… maybe 5”.

“Where was your mother?” I ask.

“She’d watch.  Couldn’t do much.  He’d beat her up as well.  He was an alcoholic”.

Mom was a special-ed teacher.   Dad, carpenter or something or other, turned into an alcoholic, a wife beater, an eventually a heroin addict. He, as all other heroin users, used and lost all family savings.  Ultimately, he abandoned the three kids and the mother.   And this single income family, this nth statistics, unable to meet expenses, soon found itself on the streets only to be rescued by the limited generosity of the neighborhood church.

With mom struggling to make ends meet, no permanent address to call home and a shamed sense of self as his zip-code, he took to the streets with his friends and his skateboard.

How does one run away from pain and shame?   Soon enough, on the streets, he learned to numb the pain with pot, alcohol, and eventually, heroin.      And how does one buy more drugs to escape one’s shame?  One must then steal.  And then one gets caught, and slowly one goes from being an abused child to a drug addict to a thief to a burglar to a convicted felon and eventually to a prison inmate facing over 20 counts of armed robbery charges.   

The progression is undeniable and sometimes inevitable.  How does an innocent child turn into a “discardable” or “disposable” member of the society?

Twenty-five years of Criminal Defense.  25 years visiting different detention facilities around the country, and each time I am awash with the same overwhelming sense of being flummoxed….  How can anyone own his present if he was deprived of his childhood?   How can he own himself, if during his formative years he was dispossessed of himself?   He learned early on to disengage his soul from his body when his dad beat him to a pulp.  And then, when he learned to survive in face of abuse by the hands of his loved ones, he’ll soon learn that survival in jail, prison, dirty sidewalks and vomit-filled beds is easier than surviving a tortured, tormented and twisted childhood … 

He will steal. He will lie.  He will betray.  He’ll do whatever is necessary to get through and survive.  He will transfer the shame of the abuser unto himself, and with time, he will learn to transfer that into anger to destroy those who try to love him and protect him.  

He keeps talking… I have to lower my eyes and I can no longer keep his gaze.   My thoughts are fixed on his mother.  I feel her devastation in having lost this child to the sad fate of her own life.  I can only imagine her desperation in watching her son slowly spin out and down the vicious cycle of crime/abuse/drugs/jail like water spinning down the drain… her inability to stop the train wreck and her ultimate capitulation and submission to “what is”.  The guilt of having failed a child, like a rope must have wrapped itself along her neck…

I feel the shavings of the rope around my neck, sliding up to my ears.

“Where is your mother now?”  I ask.

“She hanged herself a few weeks after I was arrested.” He says.

The noose tightens around my neck. Unconsciously, I bring up my hands to my neck and pull away at the tight collar that I am not wearing.

……….

 Maybe the definition of happiness is the combined total sum of the miseries that we didn’t suffer. 

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law

A Professional Corporation
15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010
Encino, Ca  91436
ph: 818-986-6222

Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger

www.alalehkamran.com

https://www.yelp.com/biz/law-offices-of-alaleh-kamran-encino

https://www.avvo.com/attorneys/91436-ca-alaleh-kamran-188112.html

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Tired

I am tired.

It is not easy to fight someone else's fight...

with all odds stacked against you.

it is not easy to fight for someone who,

more often than not,

was dealt a bad hand,

because of a bad mom,

or a bad dad...

or a bad decision....

it is less easy ...

to fight when the cop is dirty...

the prosecutor lazy,

and the Judge, ... compromised,

because there is political stake at hand.

i am tired...

of bringing it home,...

of owning it....

of making it mine...

I am tired of all that is not just...

all that is not right...

all that could have been...

all that should have been....

and the world that might have been,

had each of us,

been true

to our conscious

to our inner self

to our personal moral compass....

i am truly tired.

Tired beyond words...

tired beyond space...

Signing off

CDAK

8/20/2013

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law

A Professional Corporation
15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010
Encino, Ca  91436
ph: 818-986-6222

Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger
alalehkamran@alalehkamran.com

Los Angeles, Las Vegas

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alaleh-Kamran-Criminal-Defense-Fan-Page

https://twitter.com/AlalehKamranLaw

http://alalehkamranlaw.blogspot.com/

https://www.facebook.com/AlalehkamranCriminalDefense

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alaleh-kamran/4/965/799

Mental Illness that is the criminal justice system.

The rhythmic metrical beat of the music synchronizes itself to the white lines of the freeway. I am once again headed to the Mental Health Court, that aging beat up space once known as a pickle factory. An old red brick building, dressed up in parts in hastily drawn gang graffiti and naked in parts as the paint has slowly been peeled off by the patient hands of time. Her dark stories are many… her tragic comedies of human error and fallibility even greater. Her secrets and her pains, etched in the hallways, in the courtrooms, on the walls, and in the holding cells much like her muted cries are only visible and audible to those who share the hallucinations of the patients who breathe life into her.

Life here is the theater of the absurd. A poorly painted tableau of incomprehensible and hard-to-decipher images of mental illness, family shame, disappointment and human tragedies intertwined with murder, rape, violence etc…. This is a rabbit hole, and I never know what to expect.. The mental health patients from various hospitals loiter around in the sitting area waiting for their cases to be heard… Some are catatonic. Others clearly responding to internal stimuli. Some are ragged looking. Others disheveled. A few well groomed. The army of nurses, forensic doctors, clerks and attendants glide invisibly much like the agony and torment of these patients.

As I walk down the hallway, my heels syncopate on the bare floors. I feel the breath of the building, rasping under the weight of the cases… or at least, the weight of my cases, in this building, is too much …. A son charged with attempted murder of his mom by driving a knife into her face to rid her of the perceived evil that had engulfed her, another man charged with murdering his best friend while in Meth induced psychosis, and yet another 21 old beautiful girl with a schizophrenic breakdown charged with attempting to blow up an imaginary bomb and yet another 50 year old charged with hate crimes and terror threats against those he believes have planted monitors in his head and have raped him electronically….

I walk to the security area to gain access to the holding cells where the incarcerated ones are held. The long walkway smell acrid. The putrid smell of a meat packing house sauced up with putrescent air fresheners attack the senses. I look at my wrists. Unshackled, unbound, and free… I am walking to the holding area. I lift my arm and bring my wrist closer to my nose. I remembered to wear my perfume today. It lifts me to a happy place, to a place of love, comfort and sweet tenderness… of music, joy and euphoria. It’s my defensive wall in this harrowing place.

Dressed in Yellow connoting “mental health” jail classification, my client stares at me with vacant eyes. He has not shaved, bathed or brushed his teeth or hair in days… Dogs on the streets are better managed, I remark to myself. Our conversation is stunted, the content void of any significance, legal or otherwise… I slowly trudge back to Court and wait for my case to be called.

I think it is Victor Hugo that said that "society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.”

We have failed… we as a society have failed to provide basic necessities, such as education, health care, mental health care and jobs… and if these souls are left in the darkness to commit sins and crimes against the society, it is US that is guilty… for we have turned away from the light… We are the cause of the darkness.

Signing off.

Alaleh Kamran

Uncollected Writings, 2015

Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger

http://alalehkamranlaw.blogspot.com/

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Was It Good For you?

November 7, 2014.

I walk into court today. It's a couple of days after prop 47 has passed which means many low level felonies will now be reduced to misdemeanors by operation of law.

My client is facing multiple cases all around the county. Prior to Prop 47, including his probation violations and his 4 open cases, he would be facing several years in State Prison. Most of his charges are drug related from use, to sales...Now, because of prop 47, i can finally get him into long term rehabilitation as opposed to warehousing him in state prison.

Today, he is being arraigned on several charges which were felonies when he was arrested. As I approached the prosecutors desk, I realize the deputy sitting at the desk today is an old old colleague of mine. I met him 24 years ago when I was a law clerk at the District Attorney's Office.

Over the years, being on the same side, or being on opposite sides of cases, we have formed a professional relationship which allows us to frankly and openly discuss the facts of our case and reach socially just and acceptable results.

I slowly go up to him. Judge is off the bench. The Courtroom is quietly bustling with the business of the day...

Me: Hey love... How you been.
DA: Hey girl, what brings you to my courtroom?
Me: [with an exuberant and effervescent tone] you gonna give me my first prop 47 reduction today...
DA: I am gonna be your first
ME: You gonna be my first. Talk dirty to me ...
DA: ok. you ready?
Me: ready ready... talk to me talk to me...

....

The Judge takes the bench, and the case is called. DA goes on the Record and says: Count I is reduced to a misdemeanor. Count II is reduced to a misdemeanor. Count III is also reduced to misdemeanor.

We take care of the rest of the issues... Defendant is given the opportunity to enroll in an In Patient Rehabilitation Program...

Judge goes off the Bench..

I walk to the DA. He looks at me and says:

DA: was it good for you...?
ME: it was good for me... was it good for you??

and we both laugh until tears roll down our cheeks.

Some days, i just love the practice of criminal defense.

Have an Awesome week-end, everyone.

CDAK, Alaleh Kamran.

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law
A Professional Corporation
15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010
Encino, Ca 91436
ph: 818-986-6222

Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger
alalehkamran@alalehkamran.com
Los Angeles, Las Vegas

https://www.facebook.com/…/Alaleh-Kamran-Criminal-Defense-F…
https://twitter.com/AlalehKamranLaw
http://alalehkamranlaw.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AlalehkamranCriminalDefense
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The Chambers of my Heart

My pen has never been dryer than it is tonight despite the flow of the wine. 

The words balk at the paper. My thoughts rebel. I can't contain their movements. And like wild fire, the flickers reach to burn the dried out recesses of my being The embers explode in a luminous cadence and slowly descend to settle on thoughts and stories hiding in the folds of my soul.

My life is composed of rapidly moving snapshots of other peoples' lives clumsily choreographed in badly composed diorama sets … The dichotomies within which I move seamlessly leave me constantly mesmerized, perplexed, confused and often in pain by the inherent absurdity of life, the unfairness of destiny, and the incongruity of what we may otherwise believe to be Karma…

I stare at the coroner’s report describing the death of a 4 month old child due to a freak accident, SIDS maybe, a faulty heart maybe, ..who knows.. No one!! … All I know, is that I am the captain of this boat, of this destiny, of these folks, of this case. And that while their life hangs on the mighty fine balance of what we call the scales of justice, I know that “justice” will mean absolutely nothing, if I am not at my brightest, sharpest, smartest and bestest… This is my row to hoe. This is my field to plow, and my crop to harvest.

I move from the Coroner’s report, to re-assemble, re-construct, and re-plan a multi million dollar theft matter. Dead body on the ground suddenly vanishes from the brain. Focus is honed in, all wires tied up and circling around the papers and the trail of the money. At all times, guards are up, at all times, looking for the knife that is going to cut my jugular, and defeat me and sending my client to prison.

The sun sets. I am lost in the mountain of paper that has overtaken my desk. My role as an attorney is briefly paused so that I can morph back into being a mother, a wife, a regular human being with regular social duties. I gather my stuff, my keys to take me to my dearest ones, my briefcase to remind me of my never ending Sisyphean task and my make up bag, holding my treasured red lipstick that reminds me I am alive.

We are ushered into an enormous mansion. The fountain in the back yard flows 100 yards down the hill, and the property boundaries are vaster than my mind can stretch itself tonight. I am worn down and weary from the day’s work and yet, my lipstick gives me the power to smile and vests me with the smoothness that I need to slowly mingle with this crowd that wheels and deals with billions, and moves the economy of the land. The hostess’ diamond ring is as big as the heart of the 4 month old baby whose coroner report I was reading earlier this morning. And there is more money invested in the fountain flowing 100 yards down, that my all my clients have allegedly embezzled…

I am dizzy…. 4 chambers to my heart is not enough for me to compartmentalize all that I feel…

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law

A Professional Corporation

15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010

Encino, Ca  91436

http://alalehkamranlaw.blogspot.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alaleh-Kamran-Criminal-Defense-Fan-Page 

https://twitter.com/AlalehKamranLaw

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Heroin's lover: a choice of death.

Open Letter to my doe-eyed client who was so high in court today, he could not stand up in front of the Judge….

I know you are reading this.  I know your mom will be reading this.  There are hundreds like you on my page as they’re getting ready to shoot up, snort up, smoke out, or pop a pill.  And there are hundreds like your mom, silently reading this, weeping and wondering how much more she could have done.

You are right.  Life is not fair.  Death of loved ones is not fair.  The pain, neglect and abuse inflicted on us as children is not fair.  I get it.  I understand your pain.  I understand how badly you need to numb yourself to extricate yourself from that painful existence which is your reality.  The tracks on your arms are a road map of your pains and struggles.  I am not minimizing them.  I honor your pain.  I recognize your struggles.  I understand how you have bowed down, on your knees, to your addiction.  I understand how desperate and lonely and lost you are.  

I have seen you for years now.. I have walked with you from Juvenile court, into adult court… I have walked with you through felony arrests after strike arrests, … And through each case, with luck, with academics, with chambers conferences, with bamboozle, with motions, with tactics, I have walked you out of the doors of the courthouse,  unscathed, untouched, and with a mere misdemeanor conviction.  

Every time you’ve come to court, you were high.  Heroin is your lover.  Your mom is killing herself to keep you safe. You are burying your mother alive in your lust and passion for Heroin.  You’re an addict. You know it.  I know it.  There is no escaping it.  This is your life, and as fucked up as it, it is YOUR life, your gift on this earth for a short time, to make what you want of yourself. 

Years ago,  you sat in my office, excited over the fact that I had just obtained a dismissal on your transportation of a shit ton of Xanax, I looked at you and said:  “you think it’s easy, ‘cause you got off easy… but be careful how you get slammed, because if you don’t clean up, you’ll pay karmic wages”

Your karmic wages are here… Today, I couldn’t save you… you were so fucking stoned, your eyes were floating, your body was rolling, you were flying so high in court, that the Bailiff’s eyes welled up.  

The judge asked us to approach… she was going to ask the DA the charge you for being under the influence.  She was going to kick up the bail on your open case, and increase the case on your pending probation violation.  All I said was:  “He has been like a son” because you have.  Because I have seen you turn from a teen ager into a man, and because like how you love your fucking drugs, I have become fond of you… And it breaks my heart to see you spit your life away, as if you’re going to get a second chance at this merry go round….

You are now in the big boys’ court.  This is big league.  You either clean up your act, and decide that no matter how strong your addiction, you will be stronger.  If you don’t clean up you have two choices.  Either 1) You will do prison time.  I guarantee that.  You are a pretty boy.  Prison will not suit you well.  You won’t do well as someone’s bitch.  You won’t survive the violence, sexual or otherwise. Or the other choice is 2)  You will kill yourself and/or someone else.  Chances are you will overdose on your own vomit and we’ll be left to bury you.  

You are NOT a bad person. You are NOT a failure.  You are NOT evil.   You just have an addiction.  And until such time as you learn to forgive yourself and love yourself, you cannot move on.  I know there have been times you have hated me… Please know that regardless of your lies, deceptions, games, manipulations, all of which I have read through, I have loved you, as has your mother, unconditionally.  

Please know that the world needs you.  You have so much to give.  You have so much to teach… Hug yourself.  Look at yourself in the mirror, and make yourself the promise, that if not for your mother, then for the one person you miss the most, you will go to rehab… 

Let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll check you in.  

CDAK

Alaleh Kamran 

9/5/2014

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law

A Professional Corporation

15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010

Encino, Ca  91436

ph: 818-986-6222

Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger

alalehkamran@alalehkamran.com

Los Angeles, Las Vegas

Follow my blog: http://alalehkamranlaw.blogspot.com/

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The Pickle Factory that is the Mental Health Courthouse.

I'd rather be anywhere but here today... Parking is hell.. and there are no available spots for at least 3 blocks... I squeeze my car into a tiny hole, on badly mangled asphalt disfigured by mighty root trees that refuse to change their nature in the construct of man-made civilization.   I stumble out of the driver seat by catching my heel on the ground. 

The weight of my client's case carries heavier in my heart than my huge briefcase stacked with Jail records, Mental Hospital and psychiatrist reports.  I walk by the railroad tracks, on my way to get to Courthouse.  The train drags by along the tracks, lingering & hesitant... It too, is loathing arrival at the destination point. 

I walk into this building, an old pickle factory, now transformed into the Mental Health Court.  The hallways are packed with patients from different mental hospitals, accused of some type of a crime, or being placed on hold for being either a "danger to self" "danger to others" or "unable to provide for their own food shelter & clothing"....

Some are disheveled... others talk to themselves and respond to internal stimuli.  Yet another is catatonic and is staring into the dead space... There is a distinct smell to Mental Illness, permeated in the hallways by the pungent odors of disillusionment and the putrid smells of confusion, disappointment and desperation.

I made the mistake of becoming emotionally involved with this case.  I made the humoungous mistake of meeting family members in this wretched case of mine, and allowing my mothering instincts to gel with that of the mother.   I am now twined to the case, twined to the defendant who is facing a life sentence, twined to his mother, and his family members ....  and I have lost my footing.

I was up all last night.  My insides writhing with anguish, struggling with strategy, policy, morality, and law.     Yes, after 22 years of practice, there are still some cases that grapple my soul, and etch themselves to my inner fibers... 

The tragedy of Mental Illness occurs when it collides with the defunct, bankrupt and dilapidated criminal justice system... Years ago, in an effort hailed by the Republicans as Reaganomics, all fundings were stripped from Mental Hospitals, Mental programs, outpatient and inpatient programs much like the way ISIS strips its prisoners dignity prior to killing them.

I walk to the back of the Courtroom towards that long hallway that leads to the holding areas.  Walls are painted an ugly forest Green and the familiar smell of jail burns my nostrils.  It smells like a dirty meat shop.  The heart of this courthouse is the testament of our failure as a society.   Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher of the 19^th Century once said that the best way to judge the success of any democracy is to measure how it treats the mentally ill and the incarcerated.  And by what I have seen in the last 22 years and having worked a great part of my law school career in the mental health units of the criminal justice system, I know that we have failed.  Utterly, absolutely, unequivocally and without a single doubt. 

September 4, 2014

CDAK

Alaleh Kamran

Alaleh Kamran, Attorney at Law

A Professional Corporation

15760 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1010

Encino, Ca  91436

ph: 818-986-6222

Lecturer, Radio Host, Citizen Journalist, Blogger

alalehkamran@alalehkamran.com

Los Angeles, Las Vegas

Follow my blog:  http://alalehkamranlaw.blogspot.com/

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