Meet Felice Milani of Suffolk County Legal Aid Society

You may not see the cape, but Felice Milani and her fellow attorneys in the Suffolk County Legal Aid Society Appeals Bureau definitely are superheroes.

Milani, the Appeals Bureau Chief, has been with Legal Aid since 2014, but has lived in Southampton since 2010. She was previously with The Queens Defenders (formerly Queens Law Associates) as a public defender.

“I was working a lot of night court shifts,” says Milani, who lives in Southampton and loves being near the water. “People get arrested at all hours. I’d do a day arraignment shift and a night shift in one day. By 2013, it was a long commute with an infant at home. I didn’t even know that a public defender’s office in the Hamptons existed. I happened to be in the Sag Harbor Courthouse doing a ticket case sitting next to a Legal Aid attorney.”

She found that not only did Suffolk County Legal Aid exist, but it was hiring. She decided to ditch the long commute and even longer shifts.

“I had ten years of criminal defense experience when I began working in Suffolk County, but all at the criminal trial level,” Milani says. “I really love researching cases, finding issues. In appeals, we focus on what should have been done and make sure everyone is treated fairly.”

Milani says that the depiction seen on television where the person is found innocent and leaves prison a free man or woman is the exception, not the norm.

“We may end up with the person getting a new trial or a just sentence,” Milani explains. “Maybe the person shouldn’t have been arrested. We are one of the last steps in the process. Even if the person took a plea bargain, maybe it was not under constitutional circumstances. Perhaps you had your own private attorney but are now not able to afford an appellate attorney. We’re the primary appellate provider in Suffolk County.”

She estimates that she and her staff of four appellate attorneys handle about 50 to 60 cases per month, with about 12-15 per year being felony trials. This is where the superhero comparisons come in.

They must comb through each word of the record looking for discrepancies, things that were missed, things that didn’t get done, any I that wasn’t dotted or T that wasn’t crossed. For some, the work would be tedious. For Milani and crew, it is like working a jigsaw puzzle.

“Many of the clients we meet are really angry,” says Milani, who has grown to have a strong stomach for some of the videos and other evidence she reviews. “The system has treated them poorly. You must get through the anger to help them.”

She says that early in the process they have to do a lot of listening while the individual works through the anger.

“Sometimes you have to just listen and let them talk,” Milani explains. “It is not always the trial attorney’s fault. Sometimes, the person doesn’t have enough money for the things they need to do. It is hard to understand when an attorney must stop because they’re not being paid.”

Running out of money may mean that something falls through the cracks. She remembers a female client who had been victimized her entire life. She was eight months pregnant and had been raped. She eventually was charged with statutory rape and put in a shelter with male sex offenders.

“We can’t wave a magic wand and fix everything,” Milani says. “Our client had been mistreated her whole life and was angry. We were able to get her sentence modified and she was able to keep custody of her newborn baby.”

Milani says there are even times when they are reviewing the case of an attorney she knows or even works with. Unlike on television when the attorney gets angry about having a case reviewed, Milani says it is usually the opposite.

“They realize they may not have thought of every angle and are happy that the client may get another chance at freedom or a more reasonable sentence,” explains Milani, who says she gets a kick out of watching legal shows or documentaries.

“Real-life attorneys want the client to do well and know that nobody is perfect,” says Milani. “No one is getting sued unless they did something really bad. They’ll tell us ‘if you can get my client out or have them serve less time, do it.’”

Milani says that they not only read every word but preserve every issue because a case could end up before a higher appeals court.

“We’re attempting to make the steps up the narrow stairway to the Supreme Court,” Milani explains. “We want to go until there is nothing else that could have been done. We don’t just read the transcripts. We talk to clients, to witnesses. We look at all the evidence for every possible way to help the client.”

For one client, something as simple as reviewing all the evidence was the key. The client had told his attorney to get his timesheet, but the attorney never got around to it.

“We subpoenaed the record and found out that the attorney didn’t review the timesheet,” says Milani of the client who received a hearing because the timesheet showed he was at work at the time of one of the crimes.

Other things they may investigate include the client being treated unfairly or making sentences concurrent instead of consecutive, especially when consecutive seems to be the Suffolk County norm.

Milani, who grew up in Washington Heights, has three children, a 5-year-old son and daughters ages 10 and 11. Milani’s husband is in finance but recently opened “The Stretch Zone” in Southampton Village. Stretch Zone is exactly as it sounds, a place where people are stretched in ways they can’t do on their own. Practitioner-assisted stretching involves a trained professional guiding an individual through stretching exercises to enhance flexibility and range of motion.

Milani says she loves living in Southampton, rolling up her sleeves, and diving into transcripts looking for that one kernel that will make a difference. See, she is a superhero to those who are fortunate enough to have her on their case.

If you are an East End attorney and are interested in working with the Suffolk County Legal Aid Appeals Bureau, they are hiring! For more information or to reach Suffolk County Legal Aid Society’s Appeals Bureau, call 631-852-1650.

Todd Shapiro is an award-winning publicist and associate publisher of Dan’s Papers.