Hope Springs
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
If I had a hunting accident and blew half my fingers off, I’d still have plenty of room to count the number of Republican lawyers in public life I’m still proud of.
But there’s one in Clearwater, Florida, who’d make me wish for my fingers back so I could include him and a few of his colleagues.
Hell, I’d move to Florida just to vote for him, if he hadn’t already announced his retirement.
Bob Dillinger has been the elected public defender there since 1996.
From the start he became an advocate for the disenfranchised, for the mentally ill, for the homeless, who often find their way into court. When he wasn’t working selflessly to spare some of the least of us from the worst penalty we can inflict on them, of death, he was working to provide encouragement, food, and clothing to disadvantaged children at risk of becoming those people.
He was re-elected in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016.
At his last election it was reported that Jesus Christ Himself voted for him by absentee ballot (Donald Trump instantly whined that was voter fraud).
None of that was what drew me to him. The Pinellas and Pasco counties public defender website did that. Most such website addresses are fairly bland: Brooklyn Defender Services is bds.org; the Los Angeles County Public Defender is pubdef.lacounty.gov; my own state’s public defender address is coloradodefenders.us.
His office is wearethehope.org.
We are the hope. For no other reason than that I checked out his website.
What I saw there was something Bob Dillinger said when he first addressed the men and women with whom he would work for the defense of the seemingly indefensible that is often the work of the public defender. It moved me to remembered tears of when I first felt inspired to champion all the little men and women ganged up upon by the awesome forces of the government — at least till I’d actually met some of those little men and women. (Luckily I met some more who kept me going over the years.)
On his last day, on 31 December, this Atticus Finch of Clearwater will go out with the old year.
On his first day, at his swearing-in ceremony, twenty-three years ago, this is what he said:
We are the hope.
We are the hope of the poor;
We are the hope of those in the system who are innocent;
We are the hope of those overcharged;
We are the hope of the mentally ill that society wants to either warehouse or ignore;
We are the hope of the juveniles who need help and guidance from a system that offers little of either;
We are the hope — probably the only hope — of those our society seeks to execute;
We are the hope.