HCBA Lawyer Magazine No. 31, Issue 1 | Page 28

MyFriend,adrian criminal law Section Chairs:­Justin­Petredis­-­Law­Offices­of­Justin­Petredis,­P.A.­&­Matthew­Alex­Smith­-­Office­of­the­State­Attorney Adrian in 2008, driving his truck and wearing his signature hat. theyareeverywhere. theyareinourownfamily. theyaresleepingonthestreets. theyaretheforgottenpeople ofourcourtsystem. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” — “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee, 1960 Adrian was fresh off his first night in jail when I first met him twenty years ago. A few days earlier, Adrian had grown weary of his English professor’s tiresome lectures at USF, expressed this to him honestly before the whole class, and having tolerated about all he could for the day casually walked down, threw a right cross at the man’s jaw, and knocked him out cold. It was certainly a moment of great drama that I have replayed in my head dozens of times over the past couple decades. No doubt it was a well-remembered class by his sophomore colleagues. My buddy that introduced us informed me right away that Adrian had the triple crown of criminal defense work: no defenses, no discernible mitigation and, most importantly to me at the moment, no money. Undaunted by his lack of capital, Adrian stuck out his big right paw, said he was glad to meet me and that he really “messed up.” He wanted my help. It was the beginning of a strange, often frustrating, beautiful attorneyclient relationship. Adrian was my friend. As that professor would attest, Adrian was not one to beat around the bush. He went right to work on the fee negotiation. He explained proudly that he was a “luthier” and then responded to the confusion on my face by quickly adding “that’s a dude that makes guitars.” I liked him instantly. And so that first case, in a deal now eerily reminiscent of Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” was paid for by a handsome handmade rosewood acoustic that Adrian lovingly honed over the course of a year. Adrian did all right at the end of that one, escaping with just a misdemeanor nick and a year suspension from the university. He would later get re-admitted and earn his degree. Looking back, I got the better part of that deal. That was the first of several troubling incidents that Adrian would find himself in over the years. Adrian was mentally ill. He had an impulse control problem that would flash like a pipe bomb, and, for as long as his parents could remember, Adrian suffered from a noticeable chemical imbalance. He wanted to get better. He regularly saw therapists and physicians. He took his medication. He changed his medication. He abandoned his medication. He cursed his medication. In the moments of rationality that inevitably followed his mania or what he sometimes called his “spells,” he instantly regretted his impulse to act and ask questions later. In 2004, he pulled a boxcutter on a fellow employee who would not stop talking politics. He got in fights over nothing. He battled himself every day. He would frequently then feel immense remorse, asking me if he could apologize to the offended party — a bit of personal catharsis (or a party admission) that no criminal defense lawyer can abide. When Adrian’s chemical balance was right, he was the sweetest soul you would ever meet. He was a musician, a writer, and a man of the arts. He was a hunter, a woodworker and a herpetologist (in Adrian’s words “a dude that likes lizards”). He was an over-theroad truck driver and an air conditioning repairman. Adrian came to my office once to show me the eulogy he had written for his grandfather. It was staggeringly powerful. He sent me postcards from all over the country. I look at them as I write this — Philmont, New Mexico; Butte, Montana; Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. Continuedonpage27 2 6 S E P T - O C T 2 0 2 0 | H C B A L A W Y E R