“Defending Mr X”



My social problems professor is a lawyer by trade and a woman. By law she has to be a liberal I’m pretty sure. She still practices law and recently told us a story. I guess the point was to make use think “outside the box” or perhaps she just wanted to impress us.

Anyway as the story goes like this; there is this guy who has the reputation of being one of the “most dangerous” criminals ever to be locked up in South Jersey. She never revealed his name, so I obviously couldn’t do any further research. However, she did tell us how joined at gang at age 12, and it was pretty much down hill from there.

Mr. X apparently is the top dog in the prison world, because he has connections all over the country (and I believe Mexico.). Some how some way, he would get people to do what he wanted. Mr. X was supposedly one of the biggest drug dealers in the country, and had a long list of crimes including murder. When he was finally arrested for the final time it ended in a blood gun fight between him and federal agents. He killed several of them. He also admitted to committing horrible crimes for almost no reason (my professor was vague on this point its likely he was referring to cold blood murder of those that wronged him he was also supposedly a rapist)

One day out of no where my professors’ law firm got a letter from him, despite the fact he was not supposed to be contacting anyone. The letter written by Mr. X was asking for legal defense against the jail that he was residing in.

Apparently, poor Mr. X was not being treated fairly. Since Mr. X was such a dangerous person (or law following challenged) he was in cell by himself. When the mean old guards would come to give him his meal they had to slide it through a slot. But the guards apparently thought it would be funny to slide it in so hard that it would fall on the floor. Poor Mr. X could not touch his food after this happened so he begin to lose weight and his health declined.

Now if picturing poor Mr. X ( if you really want to he is a big Mexican guy with tattoos all over his body) with a single tear rolling down his face looking at his over turned peanut butter and jelly sandwich makes your blood boil than you might not want to read on. It seems the guards had some insensitive things to say to Mr. X too. What makes it worse is that although the jail requires him to get three showers a week the guards only took Mr. X for a wash down once a week! Now I don’t know what else was claimed in the letter she didn’t say everything, but she did say MOST of what was there turned out to be true.

She got the pleasure of talking to him one on one, and she refereed to him as a bad person. However, she did aid him in successfully winning the lawsuit against the prison for mistreatment of Mr. X. She also told us how he learned to trust her and poured his heart out. He talked about how his kids were falling on the wrong side of the tracks and how it upset him. I can’t imagine who’s fault that is. Seeing as where Mr. X murdered federal agents, robbing someone of a spouse, sibling, or child he should be glad if all that happened to his fried chicken between the kitchen and the jail cell was it hitting the floor.


I guess on paper in the law world the court made the right decision. But logically anyone with his track record doesn’t doesn’t deserve to complain about such conditions. I certainly would even turn a blind eye to the occasional beating by the guards. Seeing as where he is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail. However, I guess that makes me a mean spirited conservative who is out to destroy everyone’s civil rights for no good reason.