Bearing Witness: A Public Defender's Call to Spiritual Care

My vocation as a Public Defender transgresses conventional legal practices by cultivating pastoral care techniques as I accompany clients through the legal system. Public defense is a calling that demands more than just legal insight; it requires an understanding of human suffering, a commitment to empathy, and a willingness to be fully present with individuals at their most vulnerable moments. The foundation for these disciplines of accompaniment was laid during my time as a Master of Divinity student, where I received training in theological education and spiritual care. This paper describes how spiritual care as a discipline should be practiced by public defenders, redefining and expanding the boundaries of spiritual care in our public sphere toward a more holistic and humanizing approach to justice. 

The paper unfolds in three parts, illuminating the intersection between public defense and spiritual care. First, I offer a narrative account of how I nurture spiritual care skills as a public defender. I provide stories of how I support clients through empathetic listening, presence, and client-centered work in the immediate aftermath of an arrest. Second, as a story companion, I demonstrate how I actively resist the reductive rhetoric of state violence, which often seeks to collapse my clients into a single, criminal narrative. I explore how attentive listening and narrative reconstruction are tools for resisting a system that often seeks to dehumanize my clients. Lastly, I present a call for a broader understanding of spiritual care, advocating for recognizing professions like public defense as viable sites for spiritual care and companionship within non-traditional settings. I use my profession of public defense as one example of how spiritual care practices can transgress traditional chaplaincy and pastoral care roles.

My commitment to companionship is most keenly felt when I am the on-call attorney for arraignments.  Arraignments are the first court appearances where a criminal defendant learns their charges and rights, and the judge sets bail based on the offense, criminal history, and community ties. Clients who cannot pay bail stay detained in jail until their trial. As a public defender, I provide immediate representation in this chaotic process. The day starts with receiving a list of individuals arrested the previous day, confined within the cold, unforgiving walls of the jail. These individuals are often isolated, deprived of contact with loved ones, and grappling with the immediate aftermath of their arrest.

During initial contact with clients at the jail, I establish a firm expectation that my goal is to get them out of jail. After I explain my role as their attorney, I ask them to tell me what happened. The responses are often heartrending—sighs of relief, expressions of gratitude for being heard, desperate pleas for help. “You’re the first person who’s listened,” one client may say, their voice thick with emotion. “Please, get me out.”

Attorney-client privilege creates a safe space, a sanctuary where they can share their stories without fear of further incrimination. This freedom to share to unburden themselves allows me to enter their lives as a witness to their humanity and to recognize the inherent sanctity of their narratives. As Karen Scheib eloquently states, “To enter into another’s life story is to enter a holy space.” This understanding of my role is rooted in the principles of pastoral care. It demands reverent listening, a discipline that extends beyond merely reciting facts. It requires me to listen to the unfolding narrative of my clients’ lives – the trauma, the abuse, the struggles with substance use, the relentless challenges they face. I must understand how they have survived and persevered despite overwhelming adversity.

Often, I am the first person they speak to after their arrest. My role is to guide them through their story and help them make sense of their fragmented narrative. In the brief 20–30-minute conversation before the bail hearing, I listen to who they are as individuals—their roles as parents, their responsibilities at work, and their passions and hobbies. I listen to humanize them, to paint a portrait beyond their alleged conduct.

At the bail hearing, the prosecutor presents a one-dimensional view, a narrative stripped of context and humanity. They recite my client’s criminal history and the alleged facts of the case, reducing them to a problem to be solved through incarceration. The prevailing cultural narrative often smears my clients as inherently “bad,” but my experience reveals a different truth. Their incarceration is frequently a manifestation of underlying struggles: the weight of untreated mental health crises, the grip of substance use, or the raw, unfiltered expression of trauma responses.

My task is to counter the State’s narrative, presenting a compassionate picture of my client. I share the stories I have heard, the struggles they have told me, and the humanity I have recognized. I advocate for their freedom and dignity, upholding that they are more than their past actions. In my legal advocacy, I reveal to my clients that I have listened to and cared for their stories. I speak with my ear turned toward my clients, ensuring my words reflect an attentive care for their stories. As Gregory Ellison points out, abiding care often carries a sense of urgency and passionate advocacy, a commitment to fighting for a person’s well-being with unwavering dedication. 

While public defense is an unlikely place to provide spiritual care, public defenders must cultivate these methods because of the harm our clients face within the (in)justice system. In a system where societal pain abounds, as Cheryl A. Giles and Juliana Cohen say, “caregiving may be the only antidote to our collective suffering.” As a public defender, I use the methods of spiritual care to frame how I bear witness to my client’s lives and recognize their humanity. Spiritual care can be learned and practiced in non-traditional settings extending past traditional clerical roles. And now, more than ever, within our fractured society, public-facing professions must develop a code of spiritual care that acknowledges and responds to the profound impact of systemic injustice on the human spirit.