Feige, David 1966(?)-

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Feige, David 1966(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1966.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Writer, attorney, educator, television and radio commentator, and lecturer. Public Defender Service, Washington, DC, investigator, 1985-86, law clerk, 1989; Legal Aid Society, Criminal Defense Division, New York, NY, senior trial attorney, 1991-94; Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York, NY, acting general counsel, 1994-95; Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, trial attorney, 1996-97; Bronx Defenders, Bronx, NY, trial chief and public defender, 1997-2004. New York County Lawyers' Association and National Institute for Trial Advocacy, trial academy instructor, 1995-99; Rutgers Law School Intensive Trial Advocacy Program, Newark, NJ, instructor, 1996-2003; Hofstra Law School, Hempstead, NY, instructor, 1999-2000; National Criminal Defense College, Macon, GA, faculty member, 2002—; Missouri State Public Defender, group leader, 2003—; New York State Defender Association, Troy, NY, faculty member, 2003; Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, Faubush, faculty member, 2004—. Lecturer on trial skills and eyewitness identification issues. Commentator on National Public Radio (NPR) and Court TV.

MEMBER:

National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Reginald Heber Smith Award, National Legal Aid and Defender Association, 2002; Law and Justice Award, Rider University, 2004; Soros Media Justice Fellowship, 2004.

WRITINGS:

Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Fortune, Slate, Nation, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Washington Post, and the New York Times Magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Attorney, legal educator, and journalist David Feige has been a public defender in the Bronx, New York, for more than fifteen years. In that time, his client list has been large and steadily changing, and he has defended the poor, indigent, and underrepresented on charges ranging from murder to misdemeanors. As someone thoroughly, intimately acquainted with the courts and the legal system, however, Feige also consistently encountered the system's failings, from judges who fail to judge and who instead rule on a whim, to incompetent legal representation and prosecution, to the imposition of unnecessarily harsh sentences. In Indefensible: One Lawyer's Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, Feige "offers candid insight into what he characterizes as a pervasively brutal and capricious criminal-justice system," noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. In the book Feige recounts the activities of a single, busy day in his office, during which he juggles the requirements of handling three murder cases with the rest of his duties as public defender. He describes dozens of cases he has handled over the years, including those of hard-core criminals. Other clients' crimes seem astonishingly trivial, such as the man jailed for walking his friend's unvaccinated dog.

Feige's client list is often populated with individuals who would be considered unsavory, including drug dealers, thieves, spouse abusers, armed robbers, and murderers. However, Feige makes no excuses about his affection for and desire to help even those who occupy the lowest rungs of society's ladder. "I pull no punches about the fact that many of my clients are guilty and I like them anyway," Feige said in an interview with Boris Kachka in New York. Feige directs the bulk of his outrage at vicious or incompetent prosecutors and at judges who determine guilt and sentencing even before defense arguments are made; who impose unnecessarily harsh sentences to avoid appearing to be soft on crime; and who seem more than willing to convict an innocent person or withhold a fair hearing in the interests of expediency or a corrupt view of justice. Without hesitation, Feige names those judges he detests as he recounts their manifold transgressions against his clients. Despite the stress, the conflicts with judges (at least one of whom has banned him from her courtroom), and the consistent frustrations, Feige believes the cause is worth the fight. "Being a public defender is the most righteous work you can do," he remarked to Caitlin Kelly in a New York Daily News profile. In his book Feige "skillfully shares his wisdom and his humanity and sheds light on a justice system that too often works irrationally," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.