The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.

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."

How could I have been the valedictorian, the smartest, and never known Harlem existed? As a result, I began a lifelong learning experience, because I could not accept what the party line was with education - that these people want to live like this, these people don't have ambition, they don't want to work. You know, all the usual bullshit.

I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.

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.

The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.

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