Dan's Papers - September 7, 2007 - Jami Floyd

Jami Floyd went back and forth several times scrambling to select a location for this interview. At last, "Let's meet at The Farmer's Market," she said self-assertively, confident that the suggestion would survive.

The Farmer's Market was bustling with weekend-Hamptonites that morning, strolling about the vast, bucolic grounds - women clad, or rather scantily clad, in billowing sheer linen skirts and beach sandals. The early, ardent sun was scorching, even by Amagansett standards. The morning had awakened and rudely promised a sultry mid-summer day.

Ms. Floyd arrived in the company of her two beautiful children and her tall, handsome husband, Kurt Flehinger, a criminal defense attorney. After the brisk greetings and salutations with this writer, she sent them off to the beach. "I'll meet you at the beach later, okay honey? And be careful with the children in the water." Then, as expected, the doting mother bent down to kiss her son and daughter and relegated them to their father. The scene was that of a loving, all American family, successful and wholesome and happy to enjoy their beach house in East Hampton, which they consider a year round refuge from the concrete Jungle.

First, Ms. Floyd is a woman. Then, a mother, a wife, a lawyer, a journalist, a lecturer, a reformist and a TV anchor. She hosts a weekday morning show titled, Best Defense on Court TV. The program features current criminal trials that take place in courtrooms throughout the United States. As they unfold, Ms. Floyd renders her legal interpretation of the proceedings. In fact, that is the essence of her show. In an analytical style, she engages her keen perception of the law by defining, construing and unraveling the legal engineering, which otherwise would linger in a state of bafflement. And she deftly dissects her analysis with common clarity, spontaneity and a patient dissertation. These techniques elicit an interest from her audience, solely because Ms. Floyd simplifies the complicated judicial system for her viewers. This ability, most probably, derives from Ms. Floyd's tenure as a lecturer of law at The Stanford Law School. When she speaks, even in casual conversations, she deploys her edifying instincts, avid to convey her professional knowledge and experience in her field. She delves into conversation on several subjects, almost simultaneously, with a balanced adroitness.

Ms. Floyd was born to artistic parents and raised in New York City. Her mother was a stage dancer and singer by inclination and an educator by profession. Her father is an African American painter, masterful dauber and ultimately an architectural designer - a brew that spun her into the swirls of a cultural mingle that attaches part of her origins to the African American urbanity. Being bi-racial made her adolescent and teenage years socially difficult. This subtle anomaly was the subject of jeers and abuse throughout her formative years. When this writer asked her to comment on that issue, she thrust her hands in the air and with widened eyes exclaimed, "Are you kidding? It was hard big time, big time. It was rough, real rough. I used to get beat up, made fun of. You know, all those things. But yes, it was tough, oh yeah!"

Despite those taunting years, she says she does not harbor ill feelings towards black or white societies, consciously or unconsciously. And she seems to mean it.

Ms. Floyd's parents had aimed to turn their only child toward the arts. Instead, law emerged as her vocation, an ambition that had been fermenting in her veins. On completion of studies at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkley, she attained a doctorate in jurisprudence, a law degree. Afterward, she had the opportunity to serve as a law clerk to a California Supreme Court Judge. In 1990, the notable San Francisco firm of Morrison & Foerster inducted Jami into its cadre of attorneys where she practiced and honed her proficiency in criminal defense law.

Up to that point, the aforementioned posts she'd held had yielded valuable experiences in the legal profession. However, her aspirations were suddenly scented by gratuitous sentiments. She was struck by a yearning desire to represent those defendants who couldn't buy the best legal defense - human beings who would be deprived of the representation and fairness available to the wealthy accused. So, she enrolled in the Office of the San Francisco Public Defender. "I didn't do it for the money. There are so many poor people abused by the system. And who's there for them? No one. I considered myself fortunate, so I wanted to give back a little."

Ms. Floyd is persuasive and candid. Her brown eyes gaze attentively at her listener - an intimation of her eagerness to transmit the importance of her ideas.

Ms. Floyd subscribes to and believes in the American Judicial System, "But it needs revision...badly." She is concerned with the underlying problems of corruption, cover-ups and false confessions.

"I'm calling for the videotaping of all confessions, by everyone involved." Indeed, these issues are meritorious, but disquieting. "Any American could become the victim of these flaws in our system."

Ms. Floyd has served and completed a variety of other tenures since the early 90s. In 1993, a fascinating occupation materialized at the White House - a Fellowship in the Hillary Clinton/Health Care War Room. The assiduous Ms. Floyd, not surprisingly, had earned the respect and the appreciation of certain members of the Clinton Administration, so much so that, upon completion of the Health Care effort, the staff transferred her Fellowship to Al Gore's Domestic Policy Office/Crime Policy.

When Ms. Floyd completes a mission, her enterprising isn't over. Without hesitation, she launches into a new endeavor. The conclusion of her Fellowship at the White House gave rise to the genesis of her broadcasting career. In 1996, CBS recruited her as a legal analyst and correspondent. She was now a wanted woman in the world of television news. Her creditable, elegant and simplistic delivery and the seriousness of style with which she blended her legal reporting and analysis, earned her the esteem of her colleagues in the law profession and in the entertainment field. In a short time, Ms. Floyd's news correspondence and anchoring progressed to a consistent schedule. Her sculpted, naturally olive-toned face pervaded the television screens - World News Now, Early Morning News, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Good Morning America, Nightline, 20/20, World News Tonight and Court TV, delivering every feature of each episode with candor and authoritative competence.

Ms. Floyd has established her success with producers and network executives. Her performance attested to her caliber and her ability to carry out intricate assignments of epic proportion. To catalog a few trials: Abner Luima and Amadou Diallo, O.J. Simpson, the Oklahoma City Bombers, Michael Jackson and Michael Skakel. She also corresponded on several landmark Supreme Court Cases, the 2000 presidential election and its infamous recount, the anthrax atrocity and the John Kennedy Jr. plane tragedy, recovery and funeral. She had presented these reports with focused style, preserved the accuracy of the facts. For these qualities, Ms. Floyd garnered innumerable awards and citations, impractical to catalog herein. (If listed, this publication, I would have to insert a supplement in this issue).

The event that personally affected Ms. Floyd most was the 9/11 tragedy. Ms. Floyd was raised near those infinite towers and her parents still reside in that vicinity. She reported the events of that debacle for several weeks - a valorous act. "As for 9/11, I could write a book," pondered Ms. Floyd as her gaze, in reflection, went distant. And someday she most probably will, as she aspires to be an author. Imagine a lawyer, a legal analyst correspondent, a news anchor, a journalist, a Television show host, and, as a grand finale, a writer.

In 2005, she returned to Court TV, but this time, with her brainchild. The energetic, creative Ms. Floyd had conceived the current two-hour show. She then developed it and persuaded the Network to air it. "Best Defense" has become her forum, her perch; a perch that permits Ms. Floyd to swoop down into millions of American homes to disseminate the quenchless interpretation of the machinations that slowly peddle the judicial clogs.

Ms. Floyd - the wife, the mother - embodies the personified Hamptonite, whose delight and gratification radiates in her countenance.