Oakland lawyer turns Oakland artist - Thomas McDonnell
Just when Charlie Sheen, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, and Michael Jackson's doctors need him, Thomas McDonnell, a well-known Oakland, California criminal defense attorney every bit as good as Gloria Allred, quit the practice.
Thomas McDonnell
Thomas is now a digital artist (and very happy) specializing in creating art using scanners. But why McDonnell - who comes from a family of lawyers, based in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area – quit practicing law is a fascinating story. I know a lot of lawyers - from Oakland City Attorney John Russo and Personal Injury Lawyer Robert G. Shock, to Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie and Peralta Community College Chancellor Elihu Harris - and many talk about what they like and dislike about the practice. Quite a few quit. Some go into politics; others take a completely different turn. That's Thomas.
I met with my friend and fellow singer at The Alley on Grand Avenue, to talk about it on a lovely fall Wednesday at Lake Chalet Restaurant at Lake Merritt; the result is this 25 minute video (with one brief section a discussion with two other Oaklanders about the history of Lake Merritt).
We started our talk in the middle of a panic: Thomas was in search of an extension cord to power his scanner. Fortunately, Lake Chalet staff provided one, and we were off to the races. Thomas has a technique where he uses the scanner as a camera. The device produces fascinating images of ordinary scenes, like he and I sitting on the patio of the restaurant. Where did he get the idea?
"I was spending my nights processing autopsy autographs taken by some cop, of the burial, exhumation, and autopsy of Eddie Araujo, which was horrible. And it kind of got to me. It was the first time (working) after my mother had died. I found myself walking out in the middle of the night, just walking around. Just to clear my head of these horrible images."
(Eddie Araujo was the transgender Fremont woman killed because her attackers thought she was a woman and not a man. For legal reasons we could not talk at length about the case.)
Thomas went out with his best friend James Serwa and his wife Lisa, for an Oakland Open Studios Tour, and discovered the work of Jan Camp. She made images primarily by scanning flowers; Thomas saw his next practice, and started by "liberating flowers" for use in his newly-discovered passion for art work.
But with that, Thomas also felt overwhelmed in practicing criminal law in the East Bay.
"I never felt that I was doing a good job for my clients. Everyone told me I was a great lawyer. I was very successful." The problem was that Thomas didn't feel he was giving the client "what the case deserved". So he got out, but not just for reasons of workload or ugly images. Racism played a factor, too.
Thomas said that the racism that exists in the socioeconomic problems and in the lack of police officers and resources that come to play in cases was hard to deal with. "Crimes are committed by poor people," he said. "And it seems more poor people are people of color – black, Hispanic and elderly – are arrested and convicted of crimes than white people (or) Asian people. (They) Seem to not get as convicted or caught."
I pointed out that in San Francisco's Marina District I've attended parties of mostly white folks where at times there was cocaine (which I don't do). It occurred to me that cops aren't in that area; they patrol the poor black and Latino areas of San Francisco. Thomas said "The cops would be at the parties doing the drugs."
Thomas gave another example of racism in the way Oakland police treated a black person versus a white person today, 2009. A black man stopped by a police officer and arrested for a felony of any kind after dark would be given a curfew. But the idea of limiting that person's time out at night played into the overall racist question of what a black man was doing out late at night.
"So you get what happened with (Lovell) Mixon (who shot four Oakland officers in March) and the officers. And I knew all of them. It's tragedy all around. You get these kids who live their lives anticipating being arrested."
Thomas says that there are good and bad people in the law, law enforcement, and among the so-called criminals he's represented. The line between good people and bad people is far more blurred than many understand.
He told me a story of how the Alameda County District Attorney staffers would meet with lawyers in "the old days" at what was called The Courthouse Bar, and is known today as The Ruby Room on 14th Street near Lakeside Drive across from the Oakland Library. Thomas said they would decide cases over a bottle of scotch. "They got a lot of work done," he said. But Thomas says it had its limitations. The racism was different in that at the time the lawyers didn't know that what they were doing and how they did it was racist.
Thomas McDonnell's' advice for new lawyers
Thomas says that new lawyers should attend to how they spend their day and enjoy what they do. "The law is a wonderful career because it can lead you to, anywhere," he said. You can do anything you want to do.
Including becoming a digital artist.
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