by
Nancy Derringer
Edward Martell met Wayne County Circuit Judge Bruce Morrow in a place no young man wants to be: Standing in his courtroom, utterly at his mercy.
Edward Martell, newly minted lawyer (Photo: Nancy Derringer)
It was 2005, and Martell, a 27-year-old high-school dropout from Inkster with no plan for his life other than continuing to sell drugs, was in a very vulnerable position. Out on bail from one arrest in Romulus, he’d been snared by another drug sting in Dearborn Heights. He was looking at prison time, 1 to 20 years of it, for delivery and manufacture of crack cocaine.