Criminal That I Am

Book excerpt: A candid memoir from a talented young lawyer who becomes romantically entangled with the convicted drug felon she represents—Cameron Douglas, son of film actor Michael Douglas—and who soon makes the mistake of her life. Or does she? Criminal That I Am is a defense attorney’s account of the criminal justice system as seen through the prism of a particular case: her own. Jennifer Ridha is enlisted to defend Cameron Douglas in a federal drug trafficking case while he is incarcerated in a maximum-security prison under difficult, even dangerous, conditions. As media scrutiny and the pressures of Cameron’s case mount and as Jennifer becomes increasingly transfixed by her charismatic but troubled client, he asks her to do the unthinkable: commit a crime. In a decision inexplicable even to herself, guided only by her indignation and infatuation, she agrees. When her transgression is discovered, her criminal case begins, and her life as she knows it is over. A page-turning trip through professional self-destruction, tabloid scandal, and self-reckoning, Criminal That I Am is about the choices one woman makes: how they define her, how she lives with them, and, ultimately, how she is transformed by them. Recounted with brutal introspection and self-deprecating humor, this strange and twisted love story contemplates what we make of crime and punishment...and what it makes of us.