If you ever want to shut down the noise at a dinner party, just say you’re a criminal defense investigator. Wait until the guy droning on about shortcomings in the equity market finally looks up and asks, “And what do you do?” It seems to work best if you haven’t said much all night.
In truth, people seem to think I make a more realistic looking grandmother. Ha!!!
Right now I’m sitting at home waiting for a break in the coronavirus pandemic so I can show up unannounced at strangers’ homes with a mask on my face. “Just here to talk about that shooting in Richmond last month…” I may have to lose the mask.
I’ve done this work for a long time and it has never gotten old. Going up against the police and prosecution is always an exhilerating challenge, especially when you can poke holes in their narrow-minded version of the defendant and his case. I work for the black men in Richmond whose lives have been shattered by loss and neglect only to grow up accused of being violent. My job is to reconstruct their lives and challenge their culpability so juries will know who they are as they decide their fate.
For 26 years, I was an investigator in Richmond, California with the Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office. Then I became chief investigator in 2012 and supervised eleven investigators until retiring in 2018. Now I’m doing the same work as a private investigator, minus the workplace drama of eleven staff investigators.
I began my career in the Bay Area as a crime reporter with the Contra Costa Times and the West County Times. My journalism degree is from the University of Minnesota. I won the job as editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Daily when everyone thought this guy named Terry was supposed to get it. I reported for newspapers in Lawrence, Kansas and Nyack, New York before settling in Northern California.
I continue to investigate criminal allegations in gang cases charged against Richmond residents.
This blog is my punishment for writing a book. The book is called True to the Hood: Surviving the Streets of Richmond, California. It is the story of one of the men I worked for and how his fierce commitment to his street family kept him alive and almost killed him. Everyone says a writer needs a social platform if she’s going to sell a book. Well, damn, here I am.
Linda Sanderson 