I had this oped in last Friday's Chicago Tribune:
October 26, 2018
What does it take to get a second chance?
Steven Lubet
Reginald Dwayne Betts was still in high school when he was convicted of the crime — carjacking and armed robbery — that would haunt him the rest of his life. After serving eight years in a Virginia state prison, Betts eventually became a widely published poet and graduated from Yale Law School. In a recent essay in The New York Times Magazine, he explains the devastating aftereffects of a felony conviction, and the difficulties it created for him when he applied for admission to the Connecticut bar.
Although there is no comparison between what Betts endured and my own life, his essay has moved me to tell my story of criminal convictions and ultimate admission to the Illinois bar. I had an easy time of it compared with Betts, who wrote, “I might eventually be allowed to practice law, or, I realized with a cold, dull clarity, I might not.” In contrast, I blithely assumed that everything would work out, as indeed everything did.
I was convicted four times of misdemeanors, once each year from 1967 to 1970, between the ages of 18 and 21, all involving peace or civil rights demonstrations. I pleaded guilty three times, and my one conviction at trial was reversed on appeal. The stiffest sentence came in the last and most serious case, during my senior year in college. Although I should have gone to jail as a repeat offender, a surprisingly lenient plea bargain got me off with two years of probation.
Of course, I disclosed my criminal history on my law school applications, which I must have been filling out concurrently with the court proceedings. Only the University of Michigan seemed to care, requiring me to travel from Chicago to Ann Arbor for an interview with a dean. “Mr. Lubet,” he informed me, “not only have you been arrested more times than any other applicant to the law school, you have been arrested more times than every other applicant to the law school.” I was foolishly defiant, having already been accepted at other schools, so I just shrugged off the dean’s concerns. It did not seem to matter; Michigan soon accepted me with a full scholarship, which I turned down to attend the University of California at Berkeley (also with a scholarship, and no special interview).
My probation, however, still had a year and a half to run, so I had to get court permission to attend law school out of state. The judge chided me for “joining the establishment,” which I had no intention of doing. But I smiled politely, and she signed the order allowing my move to California. The judge did not remember me years later when I appeared before her as a lawyer, but she smiled when I explained and thanked her.
Law school was uneventful, at least as far as getting arrested. After graduation I returned to Chicago to work at the Legal Assistance Foundation, but there still was the small matter of getting admitted to the bar. Approval was a formality for most of those who passed the exam, but not for me. Like Betts in Connecticut, I received a notice from the Character and Fitness Committee, informing me that my application needed additional information. I was scheduled for a special interview with a committee member. Only then did I consult a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, which had represented me in the appeal of my overturned conviction. He advised me to tell the full truth, which I would have done anyhow, and to be contrite, which was not in my nature, though I resolved to do my best.
Arriving at the interviewer’s law office, I was pleased to see that he was African-American. There were relatively few black lawyers in Chicago in 1973, and, I am embarrassed to say, I thoughtlessly assumed that he would be more sympathetic to crimes of civil disobedience. As it happened, the lawyer who’d negotiated my miraculous plea bargain also had been African-American, so I dropped his name in the shameless hope that they knew each other.
“Oh yes, I know him,” said the interviewer. “In fact, I saw him just last week ... when I visited him in the Cook County Jail.” Unbeknownst to me, my defense counsel had himself been convicted of receiving stolen securities and was serving a three-year sentence.
The interviewer did not hold my lawyer’s crimes against me, and I evidently came close enough to contrition to meet his approval. “Young man,” he said, “I am going to take the bull by the horns and recommend you to the bar.” I was sworn in a few weeks later, and I have seldom thought about it since.
Looking back, there was a good amount of privilege and naivete in my approach to the whole situation. Having read Betts’ essay, I am ashamed to say that it hardly occurred to me that I would not be admitted to the bar. Through the entire process of applications, law school attendance, applying for the LAF job and taking the bar exam, I simply assumed that it would be just fine. Betts understood that his felony conviction, at age 16, “would forever be a hellhound on my trail,” but I had no such fears.
True, four misdemeanors are far from an armed felony, much less eight years in prison, but there were other reasons for my nonchalance. Not least, I had been convicted as a white student at a private university, where Betts had been a black teenager in a Virginia prison. I had plenty of reasons for optimism and he had few or none. Moreover, I had always been surrounded by a community — friends, classmates, fellow activists — who regarded my convictions favorably. If not exactly badges of honor, they were certainly cool.
In fact, my arrests had been foolhardy at best. After all, I was safely demonstrating in downtown Evanston, not marching on Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Our anti-war demonstrations would have proceeded just as successfully without taunting the police (which is what we had done). It seemed idealistic at the time, but it was really just recklessness.
Betts’ essay makes me sorry to have worn those events so lightly. Although I did not grasp it then, I was extraordinarily fortunate to be able to attend law school and join the bar. The judge, an unnamed Berkeley admissions officer and the character and fitness interviewer all took a chance on me. Any one of them could have squelched my plans without explanation, and who knows where I would be today? I did not appreciate their indulgence, which was obscured by my own sense of entitlement.
It was not wrong to gain forgiveness for my youthful mistakes, but it is deeply wrong for our institutions — employers, universities, governments — to withhold meaningful forgiveness from those who may need it the most. Betts describes how jobs, education, public housing and even voting rights are often denied to people with prison records. He “discovered how hard it is for a felon to get a second chance.” I got a second chance without much noticing it. The same opportunity should be available to everyone.