An Inverview with Alfredo Vea
Posted Mar 19 2006
In regards to your clients or the system, has there been a common theme through your work as a lawyer?
The common theme is the way that I approach the process of defense. I know "bleeding hearts" who believe that every police officer is wrong and every defendant is wronged. This is drivel. The opposite position is just as much drivel. I will defend any client for any crime and have done so, for my politcal belief that the truth should come out and the defendant has a right to competent and compelling defense. I do not judge my client. I attack the evidence. It is very important that I do what I do. The rest of the world can jump to conclusions and condemn without hearing all the evidence, but I cannot. That doesn't mean I take any crap from my clients. I'm way beyond that and cannot tolerate it. I recently had a client who tearfully stated that the gun went off accidentally. I told him he needed to find a really stupid lawyer to defend him. He stopped crying and asked why. I told him that only a stupid lawyer would believe the lie he just told me. The man shot his wife three times through a pillow. I took his case. He got a voluntary manslaughter rather than a murder and it was hard work getting that. So I suppose the common theme for me is 'truth'. Every jury project study of jury behavior has discovered that jurors decide on the issue of guilt or innocence within THREE MINUTES of first seeing the defendant. It is my job to disabuse them of their own mistaken beliefs in their own fairness. The prosecutor wants jurors to be judgmental and prejudiced. Most judges don't care either way. I am one with the job of injecting inquiry and antithesis into the courtroom.
Was there any particular incident that particularly stands out for you while you were in Vietnam?
Aside from many grievous incidents that I shall not enumerate here, the fact that we had to learn about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. from Hanoi radio! The American military was afraid that troops of color would sit down, and refuse to fight if they heard about the assassination in Memphis. It is the most perfect moment of the war: the war in Vietnam and the war back home to sit at a lunch counter in Alabama.
How does "Gods Go Begging" differ from other books that pertain to the Vietnam War?
I read other books about the Vietnam War. Some were very good: The Things They Carried, Dispatches, A Rumor of War, but none of them satisfied me as to the nature of war and the reason why so many young men are willing to go see what it is. Anecdotal tales of combat are meaningless to Americans, we absorb tales of violence like a sponge. Mythological violence is second nature to us. The real thing is not. War begins long before battle, it begins when we are boys longing for the initiation rite of the warrior and everything it promises: sexual prowess and sexual license. War last long after the last bullet is fired, into old age and death we go carrying a secret knowledge that no one wants to know about. War is the opposite of sexual prowess. War is desire stripped of humanity. As 17 year old boys we danced with the apocalypse and it cooked our hearts. We were disabled in our spirits and deprived of the power to love. I wanted to write a book that addressed that disabled and twisted desire. Things haven't changed a whole lot. watch any commercial during a football game. Men are still the cars they drive, the size of the engine, the pulling power. They're still at it, selling prowess and sexual license. They'll never stop.
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