Continuation of Interview: Professor Cheryl Amana Burris & Attorney John L. Burris

You don’t have to take the last dollar. You don’t have to do the last thing just to show how great you are. And so, there are things you can teach lawyers on how to be effective and how to utilize their morality based around civil rights without being a civil rights lawyer. So, that’s a different challenge altogether.

Ms. Lee: The pandemic has definitely impacted the practice in many ways. What have you seen?

Attorney Burris: Our business has continued. All the law work that you can do without having to be in court every day, it’s done, all the interrogatories, all the depositions, all the expert witnesses. Nothing has stopped in that regard. We’re on the calendar, but we’re having Zoom hearings. We haven’t had a Zoom trial. But, I’m scheduled for one or two coming up in the next several months. I don’t want that to occur, but all the other ways of resolving the case without having the trial has continued.

Ms. Lee: Has it expedited settlements?

Attorney Burris: Yeah, I think it’s been very good for settlements. Actually, the truth of the matter, what’s been the best for settlements has been George Floyd, at least in the last nine months. Now, before that, we were always having good settlements. But, I think that the size of those settlements has gone up considerably since George Floyd. In large measure, since Rodney King, obviously, we’ve had more trials and more settlements because the general White population has seen that level of brutality. But, George Floyd has taken it to a whole new level because there, the White folks saw this and they could not identify with it.

Surprisingly [in the Rodney King case], they thought Rodney King was the problem, so they never warmed to him. It’s not so much that they warmed to George Floyd, but they all could see that there was a knee on the back of his neck and they saw how long it was and they heard him cry out for his mama. They could feel that kind of pain. That’s what that meant to them, and so, therefore, that’s had a dramatic impact. And so, jurors now, they believe, are much more sophisticated and knowledgeable about these things. I just had this discussion. I did an interview in USA Today, yesterday, about the case. We were talking about jurors and the potential knowledge base that they have. That doesn’t mean they’re going to rule for you, but they knew a whole lot more about policing issues now than they did before, largely because, I think, there’s a continuum of course, but George Floyd clearly was a major breakthrough.

Ms. Lee: I’m sure you have an opinion about the Breonna Taylor case in Kentucky which settled so quickly. Attorney Burris: Well, it settled quickly because it was so outrageous. It’s the optics of it. They went into her house, a nursing student – a nice, nice person – and she gets shot and killed. The issue in the police shooting was that the tactics were bad. The liability comes from the tactics. One of those tactics is working on stale information for a search warrant that any kind of due diligence would have determined, one, that there wasn’t anything there. The guy that they were talking about hadn’t been there in ages and she had another life. They didn’t do due diligence, so, the lack of due diligence, then, ultimately, going to this house and resulting in this woman being killed, it was like an admission that they screwed up, here.

Now, that’s not the same [in the related criminal case against Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker] because that’s a different look. And, what the police were able to rely upon was that, even though they got there bad faith and all, it was the guy who shot at us first, and, if... he hadn’t shot at us, maybe we wouldn’t have shot back, either. But, that’s why no criminal charges were filed. Although criminal charges could have been filed, that’s the analysis of it.

Ms. Lee: Yes. I saw they just dropped all charges against him this week, earlier this week. That was a camouflage.

Attorney Burris: He was in a self-defense mode. He didn’t know [if someone was] breaking into his house. He fired at them.

Ms. Lee: What do you feel is the role of politics at this time and how do attorneys play into this?

Politics being what it [is], the winner controls the judicial system and the judicial system controls the kind of justice you will get either on an everyday basis or on a social justice basis. And so, to me, the most significant aspect is the political processes. Now, what that means to me is that people with law degrees should be working on all aspects of this. They should be in the legislatures, whether it’s the state or congress or clerks

for judges. They should be there because those decisions are going to be made that are going to affect your life. People may not appreciate what precedent is, but lawyers do, and so lawyers should put themselves in positions where they can affect the social agenda. That’s if you want to do that. And that means, to me, you join organizations like the lawyers committee that’s doing things, or even ACLU.

Professor Amana: And the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund.

Attorney Burris: Yes. Both of these. There are areas to go [into]. Every major jurisdiction in this country has progressive lawyers doing progressive things, not always Black lawyers, but they are there. It’s not easy to get involved because these White lawyers hold these things dear. They really do. Rarely will you find people like myself who’ve been able to say, in essence, “I’m going to do it this way and I don’t need you to help me.” Although I do work with White lawyers – one of my best friends is a White lawyer – but the point is there are areas [in which] work has to be done to move the social agenda. Lawyers should find those. But, the vast majority of lawyers are going to be meat and potato lawyers. They’re going to be doing the daily work that keeps a community in good shape – to keep the thieves away, make sure that you get what you need, [that] the lights work. The real estate, landlord/tenant problems, the contract issues – these are all things that you need people to do on an ongoing basis, and there’s no shame in any of this because it has to be done. So, all those areas that we study in first-year law school and second-year, those are going to be important areas for somebody in their lives. Whether you like it or not, people are going to have family law problems. They’re going to have estate and planning problems. There’s child custody, and you need specialty people in those areas with a commitment to that kind of work. [These areas are] not glamorous; if you want your name in the newspaper, those are not the areas you do. But, criminal law is a huge deal. So, there’s work to do, meat and potatoes law work, and people should be willing to do it. Of course, the other things that are glamorous are more challenging, too. And so, you have to figure out how to become part of that if you can. It’s not easy.

Professor Amana: One of the things that really concerns me is our students have to be prepared to go up against this new Supreme Court, and we’re talking about voter suppression, Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights. All those specific things are going to be impacted by this current Supreme Court. It’s going to be a 20-to-30-year fight. I’m going to be gone, but, certainly, I’m going to be depending on our lawyers that we’re training to wage the good fight because it is going to be a fight. Trump had a lot of lawyers [appointed], not just the three on the Supreme Court, but throughout the whole federal system. [Previously], it was getting to be a little bit ... I don’t know what the word is, but certainly better than it used to be.

Attorney Burris: A lot better.

Professor Amana: But, it’s going to go down as well because he has all these appointments. I’m looking at it in the legislative point having changes. All these things, they’re changing their laws to try and take us back to the old days of voter suppression. And so, some of our students have to be in the position to run for office so that they can… be at the table making the laws, challenging some of these really arcane laws to make sure they are not put back into place.

Attorney Burris: You’ve got to make contributions. You saw what Stacey Abrams did. Money was the big thing there.

Ms. Lee: Money, yes. Are there any warnings you would offer emerging attorneys?

Attorney Burris: So, lawyers that want to be out there know that they [have] got a lot of different things to do. Part of it, they have to contribute if they want things to happen. You also have to protect them, and this is a big deal for me. You have to protect yourself mentally and emotionally. You have to watch out for those things that could take you down. Obviously, you’ve got sexism. You’ve got alcoholism. You’ve got drugs. You have forces out there that can ruin you. So, in the process, you have to watch your personal life as you develop your professional life. You don’t get to have one and/or the other. You’ve got to have both because the personal life can take you down. I always tell people, “Be careful how you treat people on the way up because you might see them on the way down.” And so, as a consequence of that, you’ve got to have a good sense of how to communicate with people and treat them well.

Ms. Lee: As we come to the end, you are widely known for your representation of Rodney King. How did you come to represent him?

Professor Amana: That’s a timely question. It’s 30 years since Rodney King, so it’s kind of an anniversary.

Attorney Burris: Right, yesterday was the anniversary. The real question is the association between Rodney King [and] George Floyd. I had been actively involved in police brutality cases. I probably was one of the few Black lawyers who was actually doing those cases. The only other person of real significance was Johnnie Cochran in L.A., who had really been sort of a mentor to me. [T]hat case was actually signed up

by a Jewish guy named Steve Erman. But he had a falling out with Rodney King and [King] hired Milton Grimes, who had gone to law school [during] the same period of time as me. (He was at Hastings and I was at Berkeley.) And so, we had studied together a lot and knew each other from that period of time. Milton got the case then, but he was not a police practice lawyer; he was a criminal defense lawyer. He had a big personality, but he knew nothing about police stuff. So, he came to me and asked me, “Would I help him do this case?” And so, that’s how it happened. I was really hired to help with the case. But, it turned out that I was the one that knew the most about police work, so I became a de facto lead counsel in that case. It was good. As I told people yesterday, the best closing argument I have ever made in life was in the Rodney King case. When I finished that, I knew I had done something that I probably could never do again. I’ve been in a lot of major cases, but none as big as that in terms of the actual trial.

The whole world was watching, too, so that made it a big deal. It was the first worldwide televised case, not on television every day like the O.J. [Simpson] trial, but big in terms of its impact. It was huge all throughout the nation. And, the reason why it was huge from a geopolitical point of view is that the U.S. government was trumpeting what a great world this was, the United States, fairness equality, all of that. And then, what you have is this brutality that was manifested by the LAPD. That then had people say, “Is that your reality? Is that your best? Is that how it really is?” So, it had significant political interest. That’s how I got into it and helped put the case together and then did the case. But, that sort of allowed me to bootstrap into another whole arena. So, when the O.J. Simpson case arose, I became one of the talking heads. That was plenty heady and it then caused me to do other cases and all.

Ms. Lee: But, it started out with your passion and your preparation and your commitment to trying to make a difference and it just evolved, right? It’s not that you were looking.

Attorney Burris: Right. It just evolved and that’s what happened.

Ms. Lee: You all have been so gracious and generous with your time. Is there any other points of wisdom . . . you want to make or messages that you would like to share with the NCCU family, the Law School students or faculty or the Durham community?

Attorney Burris: I want to say that the law can be a wonderful and exciting profession. You have a chance to decide for yourself as to [the] impact you want to have and in what area. And, you can do that. So, to me, it is an instrument to bring about change, positive change if you want it to occur. I would add this: You can’t bring about this change necessarily on your own; for that you need the support of the public if you want to reform. And protesting is extraordinarily important. You, as a lawyer, could be dictating the direction that a protest is going to take, to some extent. So, there are opportunities there to bring about change in a particular area, whether it’s police, housing, whatever. It’s up to your own individual initiative, vision and passion to bring that around.

Ms. Lee: That’s excellent advice. Thank you.

Professor Amana: I have to say that back in 1985 when I first started teaching, we had a mission. And, now, 35 years later, we still have that mission. I want us to continue to stick to that mission, to recognize that we are a school of opportunity and that we are a school that offers a chance to people who, in some instances, have been written off. And then, invariably, our students go out there and they do wonderful, wonderful things. So, I would not trade anything that I’ve done. I’m glad I was able to commute for those 20 years that I commuted, and I have wonderful alumni out there. I miss my students. A lot of us who I came in with, like Patty Solari and Mary Wright, are all now phasing out. But I’ve mentored a lot of our young faculty and we have wonderful faculty that are going to carry on. So, I feel like the alumni should realize the law school is in good hands. I’m proud of the work that our alums are doing in North Carolina and nationwide.

Ms. Lee: Absolutely. This was truly a pleasure. Thank you so much thank for your time, for your attention, for your support, for your wisdom.

Attorney Burris: Take care.

Professor Amana: It was fun.