I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.

I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.

Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

There's a lot of active radical thought today but not much action.

If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.

I'm particularly committed to the political people who needed defense. I understand that they're fighting a bigger war than just, "Let me go get some money for cocaine tonight."

Today, it's not the same playing field as when I first became a lawyer in 1977, where the government had been restricted by our wonderful Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren's court rulings. Now it's all going the other way, the flow is against the defendant, against anything that could really help a client. But you still fight it, you do what you can do. It's all there is.