I became the defendant.(transformations)

In April 2002, I was walking down the stairs of my house. I heard my husband, Ralph, saying, "I don't see any badges, and I don't see any warrant either." Ralph has had troubles with the law as a political activist, so I said, "Ralph, take it easy, we'll get you out by lunch time."

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Then I saw that the police were all in plainclothes. One said, "We're not here for him, we're here for you." I handed my bag to Ralph and told him to call my son Geoff, a lawyer and the press. The police cuffed me and put me in the car.

The arrest was like a cloud getting ready to rain on me. I was never again going to be just a lawyer. I was becoming "the defendant."

I started practicing law in 1976. I defended a lot of the kids I had taught in public schools, as well as the Nyack Brinks and the Ohio Seven. In the late 1980s, I defended Larry Davis, a Bronx youth who had more than 25 cops come to arrest him. He shot six, eluded them and was on the run for three weeks. He was a folk hero after Eleanor Bumpers, Michael Stewart and Carol Glover had all been killed by police. He was acquitted by reason of self-defense.

When I took the case of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric accused of conspiring to bomb landmarks, I didn't think it was a turning point. The feds associated him with the first World Trade Center bombing, but there was no proof. He was in California at the time. They had taped his phone conversations for months and had nothing. I believed that my client was falsely convicted and that prejudice had triumphed.

The press picked up some threatening statements that the Sheik made during his first year of isolation. The government then imposed special regulations that, except for the legal work, he's not allowed to communicate outside of jail and not allowed to talk to the media. We signed statements affirming that we would abide by that. We then brought a conditions lawsuit, and the Bureau of Prisons moved him to the best medical facility. By then, we had lost the appeal and been denied by the Supreme Court.