I am a criminal defense lawyer. Most of my clients are people of color. I see the power of racial and economic slavery every day. I studied to be a Catholic priest for 11 years. I was a teacher for seven years in Milwaukee, Tucson and Washington, D.C. I currently am a reading teacher volunteer wth the Minneapolis Public School system. My trips in 2000 and 2006 to Asia and Australia convinced me that we are one world. I love the diversity of that one world. My last trips were to Arusha,Tanzania in February 2007 and March 2008 to help finish building Peace House Academy-- a school for AIDS orphans. My last trip to Arusha, Tanzania in February 2009, was to teach English at Peace House Academy. I could hardly wait to tell the kids about knocking 4 thousand doors for President Obama's Campaign for Change.

And I have applied to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (located in Arusha, Tanzania) to represent detainees accused in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. I attended trial at the ICTR in February 2007 and and March 2008 and decided I could not resist the combined opportunity to teach English at Peace House Academy and to participate in an international criminal trial.

I won my last jury trial in a civil case (medical malpractice) involving an orthopedic surgeon in 1989. Since then, I have limited my practice to criminal defense in state and federal courts. I have won criminal jury trials on misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors and felony charges. I have won criminal jury trials with collateral consequences ranging from the loss of a driver's license to deportation and execution in Africa. I have won criminal jury trials with mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years to life (United States v. Richardson); 15 years to life (United States v. McCoy); 20 years to life (United States v. Bueno); and 30 years to life in prison without release (United States v. Torres-Diaz).