Tikkun olam

Public defender strives to give clients ‘cloak of humanity’

Four years ago, attorney David Bell worked at a Kansas City civil law firm and made profitable use of his costly East Coast education. Then, to the shock of family and friends, he quit his $82,000-a-year job to become an assistant Jackson County public defender...

Bell said he left because he wanted more contact with clients, wanted to see more immediate results of his work and wanted to try cases. “I always had an interest in getting in front of people,” he said. “I once thought of becoming a rabbi...”

His job is to take people “who are viewed as subhuman or animal and make them appear as they are, which is human beings, to put that cloak of humanity back on them...”

There is always something to argue in defense, he said. It all goes back to a spark he sees in the eyes of almost anyone, he said, a spark called humanity, soul, God, or whatever you want to call it.

Even if that spark is not there, he said, “I’ll be able to say what possibly could have happened to this human being to extinguish the spark...”

Go you and do likewise.