Some thoughts on Mother's Day from a criminal defense lawyer

BY ZACHARY MARGULIS-OHNUMA

One thing every single one of my clients has in common is that they all have a mother.

That’s one of the many responses I give when asked the iconic question, how can you defend criminals when you know they are guilty? In many of our cases, moms play an outsized role. They advocate for their children, pushing us (i.e. their lawyers) to do everything we can to win their freedom. Moms show up in court with bail money, tirelessly visit their sons (and, occasionally, daughters) in jail, drive them to our office, drop everything to provide information about the case, help us find medical and educational records, and so much more. Often, they exhaust their life savings on attorneys for their kids. Occasionally, they commit crimes together. But only in the rarest and most extreme cases of acute mental illness do they give up on their children. In many ways, the hardest cases are ones in which the client’s mother has already passed on.

Antonio Yarbough was 18 the day his mother was murdered and he was falsely accused of the crime. With no one alive to advocate for him, he was unjustly imprisoned for almost 22 years before he was finally exonerated. He visits Annie Yarbough’s grave around this time every year. Tony was framed along with a co-defendant, Sharrif Wilson, who was only fifteen the day Annie was killed and they were both arrested. Less than a year after Sharrif was released in 2014, he passed away of natural causes at the age of 38. Tony said: "My heart breaks for the family and the mother that lost her son not once but twice." That broken heart was so big it had no room for bitterness, even after everything Tony went through, even after the dirty cops who framed him were promoted, retired with full pensions, and made every effort to publicly shame him. They got to see their mothers whenever they wanted during those 22 years.

When my own mother died in November 2011, I was scheduled to go to trial two weeks later in an important narco-terrorism case. My client, Idriss Abdelrahman, was an African tribesman, a Songhai from the Sahel region of Mali, falsely accused by a paid DEA informant of plotting with Al Qaeda to transport drugs across the Sahara. He and the judge graciously gave me time to grieve, postponing the trial for a few months. Idriss ended up pleading guilty to a much less serious charge a year later. He told me that my mother’s death, which came unexpectedly when she was a vivacious 73, was a sign from God that He was not ready for the trial to happen yet.

Even harder are cases where the client is a mother herself, rended from her children. Teara Fatico was involved in setting up a robbery in Buffalo that ended in the victim’s accidental death. She was 21 years old and had two children. She immediately cooperated with police, helping them prosecute her abusive boyfriend, who committed the actual robbery. Teara was sentenced to 13 years in state prison, despite testifying against the real criminal. She was tragically separated from her children but her godparents would bring them to visit her in prison, at least until the state moved her 400 miles from home. She took care of other women’s children in the prison nursery. Last summer, Gov. Cuomo got wind of the situation and granted clemency. Teara was released in January.

So I am thinking about my mother and my clients’ mothers and even a few of my clients this Mother’s Day. They all have mothers, after all. In most of the cases, the prison walls that separate men and women from their mothers and children just should not be there. If your mom is around, give her a hug and enjoy your time together. If you are a mom, thanks for everything you do.