What I Learned as a Black Buddhist Prosecutor about the Three Characteristics-Tuere Sala

As I wrote this blog post, I felt the familiar pressure of waiting for a verdict.  I spent countless hours waiting for a verdict as a prosecutor before retiring in 2013.  It has been a little more than seven years and still I feel the pressure as if it were me who would be giving the closing on behalf of the state. 

Some of this pressure came from my own competitive nature to win but most of it came from the realization that criminal trials were not just about me.  Victims, their families, witnesses, communities, even my colleagues were all waiting to see if the system works; if justice would be done, if the guilty was going to be held accountable.  The pressure felt as if we prosecutors held the weight of the entire system on our shoulders.  We carried the responsibility of conviction and fairness.  In hindsight, I suspect that defense attorneys, judges and juries were feeling the same pressure. 

This pressure is not unlike the weight of samsara.  Samsara is a continuous cycle of the never-ending pressure of desire.  Desire for favorable outcomes.  Desire for nothing to go wrong.  And the desire to feel good, happy, and pleased with life.  Somehow, samsara creates the delusion that each of us have the power to meet these three desires for ourselves.  We expect favorable outcomes if we’re good enough.   We assume having sufficient security will prevent things from going wrong or at least provide protection, so we won’t get harmed if something does go wrong.  We expect to enjoy lasting happiness by controlling the outer circumstances of our lives.  The trap of samsara is that no matter how wrong this expectation is, we continue to believe it.  Freedom is seeing samsara for what it is and learning not to get sucked into its current.

I came to this very understanding about 10 years into my prosecutorial career.  I was sitting in a tiny witness interview room in the courthouse, waiting for a verdict.  I had been a meditation practitioner and Buddhist for about the same amount of time.  I was sitting, going over my notes, reliving mistakes, regretting judicial orders that ruled against me and restating my closing arguments in new and better ways.  At some point I began to think about the witnesses in the trial, their families, their lives.  It came to me that in the many trials I had done, rarely were people satisfied with the outcome.  Guilty, not guilty were just words that the cost of criminal behavior far outweighed.   I realized that what I really wanted out of a criminal trial was the impossible thing of putting life back right again.  I realized that I was looking to the outcome of a trial to validate harm.   I could see how I tried to control everything and everyone to ensure victory.  I saw how this expectation was generating a lot of pressure.  It was a constant flow of fear, anguish, and sometimes relief from trying to control something outside of my control. 

Basically, I saw the samsara of my job and the possibility of liberation.  Sitting in that tiny room, I had a moment of awakening.  I understood that the strongest antidote to samsara was Buddha’s teachings on the three characteristics.  Buddha stressed that all conditioned experience is impermanent and subject to change which is why reality is so unsatisfactory and why we are always looking to find or make a better reality.  Conditioned experiences are inherently unreliable.  They cannot be personalized because we cannot control all the conditions.  As a prosecutor,  I got to know this firsthand.      

Every prosecutor swears an oath to only prosecute cases where you believe the accused is guilty.  This is not the belief of the prosecutor or district attorney, your supervisor nor the office where you work.  It is your personal belief in the guilt of the accused and your personal responsibility to prove it.  Simultaneously, the trial process itself is full of unexpected twists and unforeseeable turns and I had no control over the outcome.      

Prosecutors are constantly preparing victims for the possibility of a not guilty verdict, consoling innocent bystanders who underwent a harsh cross-examination by the defense, adjusting to witnesses who changed their testimony because of the intimidation of testifying, lapses in memory or overzealousness, and reevaluating the strength of their case based on evidentiary decisions by the judge all while juggling witness schedules, the court’s schedule, preparing for the next witness and, oh yeah, eating lunch. 

I think it is funny that people were often shocked to learn that I was an African American prosecutor and  Buddhist.  I don’t know what people found most shocking -- being a Black prosecutor or being a Buddhist prosecutor.  From my vantage point, the Dharma saved my mind and spirit.  I have seen a lot of human cruelty and harm inside and outside of the criminal justice system.  Much of it came into the light for many people with the murder of George Floyd.  Derek Chauvin’s blatant disregard for his life, his pleas and those of the community was a textbook example of what murder does to people.  The anguish of waiting for justice in a reality where injustice is the norm is what my practice is all about. 

I began writing this blog on Sunday morning before closing arguments in the trial and now the verdict of guilty on all counts has been handed down.  I barely felt the relief when I realized there are three more officers to be tried for this murder, a police officer to be tried for killing Adam Toledo, and practically as I write, the police killing of a 16-year-old girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, in Columbus, Ohio. (I still need to mention the killing of Breonna Taylor).  I am reminded that to hold all this, I incline towards the wisdom of the three characteristics.  It’s not my personal responsibility to control the outcome but it is my responsibility to keep my spirits up, stay connected to the pain and do what I can in this struggle.