The Life and Career of Constance Istratescu: Supervising Attorney, Orange County (CA) Public Defender's Office, Writs and Appeals Unit

People often ask me after I tell them what I do, 'How can you defend all those criminals?'" she said. "I tell them, 'My job is to keep the government honest after it charges a person with a crime and that person is in danger of losing his or her liberty. There is no reason to be so trustful of government, because historically government has taken the form of monarchy, theocracy, oligarchy, and dictatorship. A person could be sentenced to death without proof of any wrongdoing; remember the Inquisition and the Salem witchcraft trials?' After that, they don't find my job choice so confusing."
 

Istratescu joined the Public Defender's Office in 1986. Since then, she has worked juvenile court, misdemeanor trials, felony preliminary hearings, and the felony trial panel. She later joined the Associate Defender's Office and the Alternate Defender's Office, where she is currently the supervising attorney in the Writs and Appeals Unit.


Istratescu said it was after she began to see the gang statutes of 1989 wrongly implemented that she decided to specialize in the defense of gang members.

"My first gang case was a homicide back in 1995. I was so shocked by the stereotype of young men in gangs coming from the gang officer that I made it my mission to challenge this inaccurate and prejudicial evidence," she said.

Istratescu said the statutes make the punishment for gang crimes more severe and can cause a gang member to be convicted and sentenced to life in prison even if he was only present at the time the crime was committed by another gang member.

"I believe very sincerely that the 'war on gangs' is a panic response to a misunderstood social phenomenon and that young men from gangs are being warehoused in prison instead of being exposed to education and opportunity at an early age," she said. "Father Greg Boyle, a priest in Los Angeles who has worked with gang members in Boyle Heights for 20-plus years, said it best, 'Nothing stops a bullet like a job.'"

"In order to prove a gang crime, the prosecutor puts a police officer who is typically from a police department's gang unit on the stand," she said. "The officer gives extremely prejudicial and, in my opinion, unsubstantiated profile evidence about what gang members are like. The jury is easily swayed by this prejudicial testimony, and there is no doubt that it leads to unjust verdicts in many cases."

Istratescu conducts training courses for the Public Defender's Office, the California Public Defenders Association (CPDA), and local bar associations, teaching attorneys how to best defend gang members. In order to stay on top in her field, she reads relevant literature and case law in regard to gang defense. She has published an outline titled "Handling Gang Cases: A Conceptual and Methodical Approach," which she is continually updating, along with numerous motions and briefs, for use in gang cases. She also makes herself available statewide to attorneys who have questions about gang defense.

"As long as this 'war on gangs' is the government's response to poverty and racism, I am happy to help my colleagues improve their lawyering skills in order to better serve our 'gang member' clients," she said.

Istratescu said the most difficult challenge that she faces as a public defender is ridding the public of its misconceptions and stereotypes in regard to defendants and the criminal justice system. In order for her client to have a fair trial, she must succeed in getting the jury to "let go of their misconceptions about the criminal justice system, such as the belief that defendants are always guilty, that defense lawyers will and can do anything to get their clients off, that defendants skate or get off on technicalities, that policemen never lie, that prosecutors don't have an agenda, that judges are always fair, and that the right thing always happens."

Working as a public defender, Istratescu has experienced the system's injustices first-hand. She feels that educating the American people on the system's shortcomings and opening the doors of U.S. courts would produce a more compassionate public.

"The public must become better educated about its judicial system," she said. "One solution would be to open the courtrooms to television. Then, the courtrooms would be truly public; and people, hopefully, would be better informed, less fearful, and more humane."

Raised in the small mining town of Lead, SD, Istratescu said she grew up having conversations about politics and the human condition. As the oldest of five children, she helped her mother raise her four siblings after her father was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

"My mother has been my strongest personal influence: her intelligence, her ideas, her work ethic, her strength in the face of adversity—the list goes on and on," she said. "When I was a junior in college, I was so disillusioned by what was going on in the world that I was ready to quit. I told her I wasn't happy. She asked me where I got the ridiculous notion that life was all about being happy every day. That was one of those moments of epiphany. I stayed in college and never again thought about quitting anything I ever started, no matter how tough things got."

Istratescu's advice to law students is to figure out why they are going to law school. "The law is only a tool; it needs to be attached to something that you care about. Otherwise, you will spend long, tedious hours working on something that is meaningless to you," she said. "If something is meaningless, then you won't be motivated to be good at it—to think out of the box and come up with a good solution to the problem at hand. The law is really about dispute resolution. Consequently, it is only as good as the thought and effort that goes into it."