Ross Writing Contest
Sept. 11 defense lawyer, winner of ABA Journal’s 2024 Ross Writing Contest, recognizes humanity of reviled clients
Rita Radostitz, a former public defender who represents a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, is the winner of the 2024 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
Updated: A former public defender who represents a detainee at Guantanamo Bay is the winner of the 2024 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction.
Rita Radostitz’s winning entry is “Obbligato: What They Don’t Teach You in Law School,” a fictional story about an appellate death row lawyer with a sympathetic client.
The fictional client, Eddie Bruce, was carrying only a squirt gun when a police officer fired at him following a traffic stop, killing a fellow officer. The lawyer, Rosemarie, makes a last-ditch effort to save him from execution.
The word “obbligato” in the story title is a Latin word with two meanings, Radostitz told the ABA Journal. It means “accompaniment,” and it refers to a part of music that is necessary but not part of the main piece.
As the story title, “obbligato” signifies that “accompanying a client through execution is an absolute necessity to legal representation, but it’s not something that’s ever contemplated as being part of your job,” Radostitz says.
Lawyers involved in capital defense work aren’t trained to accompany a client through execution.
“And I want to start changing that,” Radostitz says.
Radostitz also wrote the story to show a public defender treating her client as a human being, “rather than treating him as only the worst 10 minutes of his life, which is often what happens to people on death row.”
According to her bio on the Promise of Justice Initiative website, a decarceration legal organization, Radostitz currently represents a Guantanamo Bay inmate charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for the Military Commissions Defense Organization. She is also a former journalist, a former public defender in Washington state courts and in Oregon federal courts, and a former capital defense attorney at the Texas Resource Center.
In a TEDxUOregon video on YouTube, Radostitz said she represents someone charged with one of the most serious attacks against our country because she thinks that the U.S. justice system “works best when everyone is represented, including those charged with the most horrendous crimes.”
She also said it is important to recognize the humanity of her clients “because if I don’t, it will reduce mine.”
Asked whether her short story was autobiographical, Radostitz answered “yes and no.” The short story is true in that the events can and have happened in capital cases, she says. The conversations that Rosemarie had with Eddie are based on conversations that Radostitz had with previous clients, although they are not exactly the same.
The short story offered Radostitz a way to write about her experiences without violating attorney client privilege, she says.
Radostitz has a graduate degree in literary nonfiction, and she has done a lot of nonfiction writing. She has never written a fictional story, however. Now that she has won the contest prize, she is thinking about writing more fiction.
The ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction awards a $5,000 prize to the winning writer of a story that illuminates the role of the law or lawyers in modern society. The winner is judged by a panel selected by the Journal’s editor and publisher and confirmed by the Journal’s Board of Editors. Entries cannot be longer than 5,000 words.
Entries were judged based on creativity, plot exposition, legal insight and character development. The essay is expected to be posted on the Journal’s website the week of Thanksgiving.
Updated July 9 at 2:40 p.m. to report that Rita Radostitz has a graduate degree in literary nonfiction.
