Which meant that you’d try to have a man sentenced on the basis of your feelings? You’d make not only a poor lawyer, but also a poor prosecutor, judge or juror. Stay away from courts.
I bet you’d feel differently if the defendant’s next planned victim were you or someone you cared about, hmm?
And I bet you’d feel differently about the role of defense attorneys if you needed one and they decided you were guilty and deserved to be convicted.
Actually, why have defense attorneys at all? Let the police decide if the person is guilty. That way, everything is super efficient.
If I’m a danger to the people around me, my wants should be at the bottom of anyone’s priorities list. Immediate Safety is more important than the absolute best justice, is it not?
And you’ll let anyone decide if you’re a danger, right?
No. The absolute best justice (not that such a thing is possible) is far more important.
Explain to me again what your interest is in this discussion with me, please? I’m wondering what your problem is, and why you can’t just leave me alone or Pit me.
It seems there might be a defense lawyer out there feeling guilty about getting a (possible) killer off:
http://news.yahoo.com/vermont-blotting-old-stain-towns-reputation-050821003.html
in short, in 1957 a farmer was killed and dumped in a river. He was found with his ankles bound and his hands tied behind his knees. Officially, he died of “suffocation (means unknown).”
Now, nearly 60 years later, the former defense attorney, later judge, has written a book claiming to have “solved” the mystery. He - get this- clams the guy killed himself.
“Martin argues that Gibson…staged evidence at his farm, walked over a bridge to New Hampshire, climbed out on a pier, tied himself up and rolled himself into the water.”
I wonder if the attorney is feeling guilty after all these years, and wrote the book as a way of easing his conscience - “see, if he committed suicide, I didn’t get a guilty man off.”
Quote from the victim/suicide’s niece:
“I don’t know why a supposedly intelligent man like Judge Martin would say that,” said Doris McClintock, 75, Gibson’s niece, who still believes some of her neighbors know what happened to her uncle.
I’m posting on a message board. How about you?
I don’t own the board, nor do I represent it in any way, so the one does not equal the other.
You asked me my interest. I said I was posting on a message board where we discuss things. That’s about it. Not sure what else you are going for.
I bet you’d feel diferently if the defendant sentenced thanks to the deliberate sabotage of his own lawyer who felt bad vibes were you or someone you cared about, hmm?
Prisons are slam full of guilty people who feel quite badly about how their trials and sentencing worked out. Probably some of them have friends and family who would have been very pleased if they’d been released in spite of guilt. What this has to do with how the survivors of murdered innocent third parties might feel, you will have to clarify.
I generally ask my clients if they ‘did it’. However, this conversation usually comes after I already have the police report/other evidence, so I already generally have a good idea of what evidence exists (and have my own guess as to whether they’re guilty). I want to give them the chance to explain their side of the story, see how much it may differ from the ‘official’ events, and also to get a general sense of how well they tell their story - sometimes you’ll get people who are obviously guilty but insist they aren’t, and aren’t very convincing - well, that’s good to know if you’re deciding to put them on the stand or not.
What if the client is guilty but might have had a damn good reason or excuse? Or even a bad excuse?
Like he killed someone, yes, but the other person deserved it?
What if the defendant is mentally unstable and did a crime like armed robbery because… who knows why.
Then their are accidental crimes like I read once where a girls boyfriend talked her into holding a gun and the gun went off and killed someone.
So then their goal is to either get them off or get the lightest sentence.
Criminal Defense Attorney here…
Short Answer: No
Medium Answer: In 10 years as a public defender, representing a couple thousand clients over that time span, there are a few anecdotal truths I see. 1) Most clients are guilty of something, although it’s usually jackassery combined with poor coping skills, that are rarely a threat to the community at large. 2) Most clients are over charged. 3) 84% of the criminally accused would qualify for a public defender, i.e., racial and socioeconomic disparities are alive and well.
So, knowing that my client’s are over charged and that the system is actively working against them… no, I do not feel an ounce of regret in zealously representing my clients. Even the one’s caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Long answer by way of example: Hypothetical client is a 90lbs Asian girl who has a wicked temper. Alleged victim is a 260lbs boyfriend/baby daddy who is on probation for domestic assault, against client. Alleged victim wants to go out with friends for the fifth night in a row, leaving client with small children. Client says no. If you want to go out, you can take the kids. Alleged vic pushes past client to go outside, and client grabs his shirt to try and pull him back in house. He leaves. Fearful that she might call the cops on him (for pushing past her), he calls the cops. She admits to pulling on his shirt and is arrested. She has a prior A/B on sister, and a prior with her mother. So she is charged with felony domestic A/B.
No offer from prosecutor. She must plead straight up to Domestic 3rd, eat the felony, and we can argue sentencing. Because despite the deminimis nature of the “touching,” according to the law, she is still guilty.
Hypothetically we go to trial. Hypothetically my client testifies and admits to pulling on his sleeve. Hypothetically I didn’t even have time to go downstairs to buy a soda before the jury was back with a “not guilty” verdict.
She absolutely did touch him, in an angry manner, without legal reason or justification. Should I feel guilty that she was found not guilty?
If you feel that you really need to resolve the contradiction, look at it as the DA is really doing two roles at the same time. One role is the attorney for the prosecution: just like the attorney for the defense, their job is to argue zealously for their client’s side. The other role the DA plays is being the representative of the Commonwealth/State/Queen which is bringing the prosecution (so in that role, they’re the client, who gets the attorney to the prosecution to go to court for them)In that role, it’s their job to decide which cases to prosecute, and part of that job is evaluating whether they think the person really is guilty.
On a related note, it seems like you take a dim view of prosecutors. Why is that? What’s the personality profile of a typical prosecutor, in your opinion?
In that scenario you shouldn’t feel guilty, but what if you defend a different type - a serial killer of the Jeffrey Dahmer sort - and he is acquitted?
If only we had some sort of system to determine if someone was a danger to the people around them. Let’s imagine what that system would look like. How about, we have one guy/group of guys to assemble all the evidence that the person is a danger, and another guy to assemble all the evidence that the person is not a danger, and a third guy to listen to the evidence from both sides and reach a decision. And since we wouldn’t want the third guy to just follow his gut all the time, we could establish some sort of list of guidelines for this guy to follow.
Does that sound like a good procedure?
Or should certain people just be able to declare certain other people a danger, and do whatever they liked to those “dangerous” people? Like, cops should get to decide if you’re a danger, and if you are, they get to lock you up, for however long the cop feels like? Or just shoot you in the back of the head, if they decide you deserve it.
Can you think of any potential consequences of allowing cops to act as–hmm, what’s the saying–“judge, jury, and executioner”?
We’ve tried systems where the powers-that-be can do whatever they like, and the people they exercise power over had no recourse. If the guys with guns beat you up, or toss you in jail, or take your stuff, or kill you, that’s what they get to do, because they have the guns. If you don’t like it, fuck you. But we’ve decided that this sort of thing leads to inevitable abuses. It turns out that if you give cops the unreviewable power to determine your fate, the cops tend to make decisions, not based on the best interest of society, but on the best interest of the cops.
And so we have cops who do their job, but we also have lawmakers, and prosecutors, and judges, and yes, defense attorneys. Without defense attorneys the system could not possibly work, because that would mean that whoever the prosecutor decided should be punished would simply have that decision carried out. Is that the society you want to live in? Because there are places today where that system absolutely occurs, and if you want to move to one of those places you are certainly free to do so.
I thought I was clear :
You said “what if your loved one was victim of a guilty man whose lawyer defended so well he was acquited?”
I answered “what if your loved one was victim of a lawyer who on purpose defended they so poorly they were sentenced despite being innocent”?
You’re stating that if you were a lawyer, you’d feel entitled to decide on guilt and innocence all by yourself and would actively subvert the justice system in order to get whoever you feel is guilty sentenced. Why not just gather a crowd and have him lynched? It would be pretty much equivalent. Except lynchers at least acted openly, while you’d act sneakily.
Acting this way would be actively destroying our fundamental right to a fair trial.