One of the reasons I stopped practicing criminal law years ago was the pain in seeing clients go to jail, often for much longer periods than I thought was necessary. It is especially hard on their families. While, of course, I recognize some people do need to be incarcerated, it began to take a toll on me.
While I was doing it, I did try to view my role as a counselor for the accused, making sure as best I could, that they understood their options, the case against them, and how a trial would “look” and likely play out. Many defendants really are clueless about how the trial actually works and what does and doesn’t matter. (Although they are quite aware about the other parts of the justice system). If they ended up convicted (as most do) they hopefully didn’t feel like an injustice was done, and that they were a victim of a crooked system. I let them know I would do my best, but that the odds were against a happy ending.
Every criminal defense lawyer has had their “first huge loss at trial.” It goes with the territory. It is sometimes balanced by those glorious nights when you can share a drink with your just-acquitted client after a tough fight in court.
The other frustration you have noticed is the feeling that maybe you didn’t do everything possible for your client. That, also, is common. And, it’s probably true to some extent. The reality of a criminal practice is that the time limits are short, the case load is heavy, and you’ll never match the resources of the government. I’m not sure that much would change in most cases if those constraints didn’t exist. Most losses I’ve experienced can be explained (after a cooling off period) by some essential fact that simply could not be ignored by the jury. No amount of clever lawyering would change that in the average case. At the end of the day, the facts are the facts, and they all took place before you were involved.
In serious cases, jurors are much more reluctant to fully embrace presumption of innocene and burden of proof. It’s easy to let a suspected shoplifter off on Constitutional principles, but harder with an accused rapist or robber.
Thanks for all of the support. I’m still upset over the result, but I will recover. The advice on this board, from both the left and the right, is helpful and encouraging.
I’m sorry to hear this. It must be especially difficult since you said he wasn’t guilty (well, you said you don’t believe he was guilty, but since we’re talking about how you feel, that’s what counts). It sounds like you did everything you could, though.
A bit of wisdom that makes me feel better sometimes: It’s possible to do everything exactly right and still have it go all to hell.
You might have made mistakes, but maybe you didn’t, and there’s no real way of knowing in a world of complex causality. Or maybe you could have made zero mistakes and still had the same undesirable outcome.
It sounds like what you’re feeling is normal for any person with empathy. I’m sorry you have to go through it and I hope it gets easier for you to accept that you can’t control the outcomes.
Condolences to you. Did the trial focus on physical fact (did he do the deed?) or extenuations (e.g. self-defense)? Either way it must be very frustrating that you, a reasonable person well acquainted with the case, thought him innocent but 12 jurors found him guilty “beyond reasonable doubt.”
The bottom like is that some people should be in prison. If that wasn’t true, there would be no justification for having prisons. Sometimes a good lawyer can present the best possible defense and the system is supposed to find his client guilty anyway.
Prior to verdict, you have to believe that there is something you can do, some magic strategy, some eloquent phrase, to win. You have to believe that even up to the last and in the face of daunting odds because it is what keeps you striving to do your best for your client. And that is your duty - to do your honourable best for your client (no cheating or ethical breaches). Not to win.
After the trial is over, you have to radically change mental gears towards more realism. You can’t beat yourself up on the premise that the magic formula actually existed and you were too incompetent to find it. Or crucify yourself on your choices - I did A when choice B was available, therefore if only I’d done B I would have won. It is almost certainly wrong. That way madness lies. Do not buy into that soap opera logic of “it’s my fault he’s in prison”. You were not a cause of his incarceration - you tried to prevent it as best you could. Misattributed guilt is toxic.
Four things.
Remember to keep working on the remainder of the work you have to do, and get yourself emotionally “up” to do it.
Do not let a loss or losses make you defensive, so that you start expecting to be beaten. Do not start being afraid to make choices. Keeping too many balls in the air can be bad advocacy, and the lawyer who tries to keep every conceivable alternative possibility alive because it just might be a winner simply has an incoherent and unpersuasive case theory.
Do not fall into the trap of making excuses to yourself in advance in case you lose. This is treason to your client. The number of lawyers I’ve seen essentially apologise to their opponent for running a weak case… If you’re running it, run it. Don’t give your ego an exit strategy in advance, because it is not about your ego.
Do reflect upon what you’ve learnt, when you have enough emotional distance to be dispassionate. It may be as simple as using this experience as a data point that helps you calibrate your sense of what amounts to a reasonable doubt to juries. Defence lawyers who are used to the point at which they get clients off at the level of minor offences often hit the wall when they get to the Big League, and discover that jurors become much more hard-nosed and unforgiving.
Not an attorney but ant time in life you suffer a loss you have to be able to learn from it and more than one night with Jim Beam and interferes with that.
Fortunately I’ve only had experience with the civil law side of things, but I do vividly remember my attorney explaining the crapshoot nature of trials and how she lost some she thought she had a really strong case. I could tell she believed she felt she should have won.
Your future clients need your personal experience of having lost cases to really understand the stakes.
It’s refreshing to see lawyers discussing the human side of their work - like journalists, there’s a tendency to lump “lawyers” and “the media” into some massive hive-mind conspiracy that’s somewhere on the scale between “Evil” and “Cyber-Hitler”.
I know “you tried your best” isn’t really helpful advice, but in this case it really does sound like you did. Don’t beat yourself up on it, and don’t take the outcome as a personal failing. There’s no way to know why a jury ruled a certain way and it’s quite possible they reached their conclusion based on something that had nothing to do with you, the way you conducted yourself, or the arguments you presented on behalf of your client.
I was going over some old files I was sending to long term storage and I winced at some of the work I had done there, so no you will not feel better about this. You will wonder if there is something you could have done better, because well, there always is.
But keep solace in the wise words of the great US Advocate and Solicitor General, Robert Jackson
On the rest, yup. Its not easy seeing a person going to jail, no matter how much they deserve it, no matter how many times you see it. Something not appreciated by laypeople (just look at the comments in that Utah judge thread). Reality has a way of being rather stark.
If we take at face value the OP’s belief that this wasn’t the guy who did the crime, then it’s probably this:
Since the victims mistakenly believe the actually guilty party is being punished, they feel some relief, vengeance, “closure” (a term I hate), etc.
If the magic fairy showed everyone who the guilty party really is, then the victims, assuming they’re themselves decent people, would be upset to horrified at the second tragedy here, the railroading of an innocent man into prison. While also being horrified that the real perp has continued to walk free for however long.
Since 2) isn’t going to happen, we’re probably stuck at stage 1).
But what about the new victim of this second crime: the innocent guy in prison? What of him and of his next of kin? What of their feelings of victimhood?
This is why we have the system we do. To try to remember that even good convictions don’t undo the original crime. While bad convictions create a new and ongoing crime. One arguably worse for being perpetrated by the government meant to protect us all.
Think of it this way: You think that this guy factually wasn’t guilty. Maybe, maybe not; I certainly don’t have enough information to say. But eventually, you’re guaranteed to get a client who really is guilty as sin and really does need to be locked up for a very long time. And when that happens, the most just outcome, the one that the entire court system should be striving for, is that that defendant is found guilty. And when that eventually happens, you still won’t know with 100% certainty whether he actually was guilty or not. And you might even believe strongly that he wasn’t.
In other words, there is bound to be a time when you’re going through what you’re going through right now, and yet where that will be the exactly right thing to happen. When that happens, should you tear yourself up over it? And if you shouldn’t tear yourself up over it then, should you do so now?
The best way to avoid self-recrimination over losing outcomes in criminal defense work, is to ensure that all your clients are found not guilty (or better yet, never come to trial in the first place).
“I don’t much care for the whole idea of leaving a man’s fate in the hands of twelve people, not one of them clever enough to get out of jury duty.”"
What does political affiliation have to do with discussing a lawyer’s professional duties?