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Bar News - March 7, 2003 Adding Global Perspective to a Legal Career By: Lucy Martin Editor's note: Lucy Martin, who is currently on inactive status with the NH Bar, is serving as a liaison for the American Bar Association's Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI). She writes from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This column originally appeared in the Winter 2003 edition of the CEELI newsletter and is reprinted with permission. IN OCTOBER OF 2001, I came to Uzbekistan as an eight-year veteran Public Defender from New Hampshire, the land where jurors with "Live Free or Die" license plates issue acquittals in half of its criminal jury trials. Now, I have signed up for my second year with the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) as a criminal law liaison, not because I believe I can change anything overnight, but because I have started connecting with the people in this country who have a fighting spirit - the advocates for the accused. All in all, I think that the projects my staff and I are trying to carry out are important, appreciated and make a difference in people's lives - largely because they give them hope that the future can be different. In spite of the work of local and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and increasing amounts of foreign aid, in some ways, conditions in Uzbekistan seem to be getting worse. In the past few months, we have witnessed a horrifying death by boiling water in the Jaslyk Prison and the death in custody of a pretrial detainee in Tashkent, which authorities described as a suicide, but appears to have resulted from torture. The president imposed a 90 percent tax on all imports a few months ago, which was recently slightly reduced, but has still resulted in shops carefully spacing bottles of water on shelves that used to hold a variety of products - and often just closing altogether. In a country with very little political dissent, the bazaars have gone on strike. Thousands of Uzbeks flock to the Kazakh enclave of Shymkent on the weekends to buy clothes and other basic consumer goods. While we expats live a peaceful life with quiet streets and few interruptions of services, the citizens of Uzbekistan are struggling under a government that stifles freedom of expression, an independent judiciary and basic commercial activity. In spite of these difficult conditions, there are lawyers in Uzbekistan who want judges to hear arguments about international standards of criminal justice, who fight every day to get good results for their clients in courtrooms where acquittals are nearly unheard of and who want to talk about torture, corruption and other topics that may draw unwelcome attention to themselves and their practices. They feel that CEELI's efforts as an international organization make a difference, whether it means administering a project to put recording equipment in the criminal courtrooms, or providing direction and funding for continuing legal education, including advocacy skills training that utilizes human rights conventions. The dedication of these advocates to improving the reality of their practice really inspires me. As a public defender in the United States, I often felt that my clients got trampled by the system. Nevertheless, it was possible for me to convince a jury that the state had not proven its case, I had the opportunity to convince a prosecutor or judge to do the right thing without paying a bribe, and I could count on the support of my colleagues at every turn. In Uzbekistan, advocates here usually cannot relate to these satisfying aspects of American legal practice. Frankly, it is difficult to understand what enables them to do what they do. While living here has given me a renewed appreciation for the potential of the American Constitution and the vigor of American criminal defense attorneys, I never hesitate to speak openly about human rights violations in the United States. Many Uzbeks are not aware of the erosion of civil liberties that Americans have largely tolerated since 9/11. They are also unaware of the heated debates surrounding the legality, morality and effectiveness of the death penalty in America. And as we enter 2003, the 40th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, too many of the accused in American criminal courtrooms are appointed lawyers without sufficient time or resources to represent them zealously. I am ashamed to come from a country that leads the way in providing an adversarial system and due process guarantees, but which frequently does not provide adequate compensation for the lawyers entrusted with these precious duties to ensure the realization of these values. I feel quite certain that some day I will return to defending indigent people in criminal courts of the United States, perhaps somewhere with better weather than New Hampshire. But I will do so with a more global perspective. I will appreciate the protections of the American process, but I hope I will be able to demand more from it, as well. I will endeavor to challenge the shortcomings that I sometimes accepted before. Trying to advocate for adherence to international standards in the Uzbek system, which is more inspired by Soviet practice than the reforms currently underway in Russia, has given me a whole new vision of the strengths and weaknesses of the American system. I wholeheartedly thank CEELI for this opportunity.
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