Books in Brief: How Can You Defend Those People?

“How Can You Defend Those People?”: The Making of a Criminal Lawyer, by James S. Kunen (Random House, 270 pp., $15.95)

Sixteen years ago, James Simon Kunen wrote The Strawberry Statement, an endearingly callow memoir of the Columbia University riots that was immensely popular with high-school students and young revolutionaries around the country. Mr. Kunen subsequently grew up, got a law degree, shortened his middle name to a more dignified initial, and became a public defender in Washington, D.C. “How Can You Defend Those People?”—the latest installment of his serial autobiography— is as stylishly written as The Strawberry Statement and nowhere near as callow. Mr. Kunen, one of those motheaten young idealists who voted for Walter Mondale, is perfectly honest about himself and the system he works for; one has to admire an idealism so comprehensive that it can stand up to the hot blasts of reality that come belching out of the ghetto and into the courts day after day after day. And Mr. Kunen’s idealism never gets in the way of his reportage; he’s willing to tell you what happens and how he feels about it, regardless. One story must stand for a dozen. A hard-nosed judge bellows at a public defender: “The presumption of innocence is a legal fiction! He’s guilty! He knows he’s guilty, and I know he’s guilty!” Mr. Kunen indignantly tells an older defense attorney of this constitutional outrage. The older attorney replies: “In fact, what the client’s probably thinking is, ‘Who is this man? How can he