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| Jeffrey Skinner, Columbia 2L, and Philip Hamilton, Esq. - Bronx Defenders representing Geraldine Rojas in Bronx Criminal Court |
by E.C. Gogolak
On a recent afternoon in the South Bronx, Cordice Smith, a 79-year-old Korean War veteran wearing a Yankees hat, was standing in the tiled lobby of his apartment building — something he no longer takes for granted. Earlier this year, he almost lost his home after receiving a letter from his landlord’s lawyer: an eviction notice.
The landlord claimed that Mr. Smith, who had pleaded guilty two years earlier to cocaine possession, had used his apartment to sell drugs, and so could be evicted. Kemper Diehl, a third-year Columbia Law School student, argued otherwise.
Mr. Diehl was one of a group of Columbia law students interning with the Bronx Defenders, an organization that provides free legal services to the indigent, working in the trenches of the borough’s notoriously sluggish and dysfunctional court system, where there are hardly enough lawyers to go around and cases can drag on for years....
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