I am sad as an attorney about all of the negative comments about the defense attorneys simply because they are defending someone that is from all appearances guilty. The fact that so many people are perplexed by this means that my profession has flunked in its obligation to protect its role in crucial Constitutional rights by making sure that this role is understood.
I no longer take criminal cases but I have and I have done so knowing in my heart of hearts the person was guilty (though I never would ask because I could not knowingly put on false evidence) and today some of my dearest friends are criminal defense attorneys that defend guilty people all the time. It is not so much that I or these people believe guilty people should go free. To the contrary, it is that we believe in our legal system when it works properly and that we want it to work properly for innocent people. At the time the U.S. was founded the founders wanted a free and just society as a result they wisely decided on a system that required the government to prove that an individual had committed a crime to the satisfaction of an unbiased jury. Not only that: they decided that a very high standard should be applied in determining legal guilt: "beyond a reasonable doubt," or near certainty because it is better one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer. To achieve this goal it means you have to keep the government honest: no convictions based on false or planted evidence, unreliable or lying witnesses, or confessions extracted from the accused by torture, beatings, or other forms of duress…even if the accused is, in fact guilty. All that is essential for the system to work. If we permit the government to cheat in order to imprison a guilty individual, we have no way to stop it from cheating to imprison an innocent one.
Regardless of whether a l lawyer's client is guilty of the crime she is being tried for or wrongly accused, the defense attorney's job doesn't change: make the prosecution prove its case with sound arguments, real evidence, and reliable testimony. In a sense, the real client of a defense attorney isn't truly the defendant at all but the integrity of democracy and the justice system.
Criminal defense attorneys have an unimaginably difficult task, as stressful and emotionally challenging as any job on earth. It doesn't produce satisfaction or joy when defense attorneys see their guilty criminal clients go free. But unless defense attorneys do their jobs well enough that this can happen when the prosecution or jury don't perform their duties, a system that often doesn’t work could not ever work. Individuals accused of crimes would become helpless, completely dependent on the good faith and competence of police and prosecutors. Even when defense attorneys give zealous representation we know innocent people are sent to jail even death row. Look at what happened in Illinois!!!
Many attorneys can't handle the complex ethical balancing that criminal defense work requires. I left criminal practice because I couldn't. But they are not the villains and liars of the justice system; they are its ethical heroes. Their zeal in making sure that citizens lose their freedom only when there is strong evidence to justify it protects all of us! The attorneys in this case do not deserve everyone’s wrath. It is sad.
Sorry for the rant... |