Ask around. Dishonest attys will have a reputation. As will honest ones.
Someone like Guiliani - IMO/E - is an exception. IMO, he clearly is a lying whore who will say/do whatever he can to help his client. But steadfast supporters of the president likely view him as an honorable and intelligent crusader in the cause of truth and justice… Perspective matters.
(my bolding)
Insightful post, thank you. But has anyone ever bought this? IME the scenario is code for “very DUI”
One way is to look up the lawyer’s record with the relevant licensing body (in Ontario, it’s the Law Society of Upper Canada). Do they have a record of disciplinary proceedings against them?
This isn’t a perfect method, but it can be helpful to see if there have been complaints and disciplinary orders against a specific lawyer.
Why did you post this in response to me? Nowhere did I assert that it should be legal to transport and sell fentanyl-mixed heroin. The illegality of heroin doesn’t magically make the cop’s blatant violation of the supreme law of the land go away, or make the defense attorney ‘dishonest’ for calling out the cop for his blatant violations. It’s utterly bizarre that you call the defense attorney ‘dishonest’ when all he does is state things that are clear and unambiguous facts, but don’t level that at the cop when he states things that simply aren’t true (the claim that the had probable cause for the stop and search when he didn’t actually).
Your argument seems to be that the defense attorney should refrain from questioning the untrue statements made by the cop because HEROIN IS BAD, but that would require him to actually be dishonest. And the argumentative technique that you use of trying to avoid addressing the issues by throwing in HEROIN IS BAD is also pretty dishonest. Again, the defense attorney seems to be the only one not engaged in dishonesty here.
It’s referenced in Colorado’s (where I live and practice) criminal statutes.
As a defense attorney, I want to be careful how I would present this. But I have a guy who got in an accident and left the scene to go to his friend’s house. He had been at a restaurant, where he knows the waiter, and the waiter is prepared to testify that he did not serve him alcohol before he left. So, maybe he drank when he got to the friend’s house, but before cops found him.
Is it unethical to present this waiter’s testimony? Well, as the attorney representing the driver, I am allowed to take my client at his word. In the absence of some irrefutable evidence (perhaps the bill from the receipt, or surveillance footage), it’s ok to present the evidence you have. The jury, as I noted, is usually a good judge of cutting through bullshit (as you yourself noted, this sounds like a weak explanation).
The likely result of that case, by the way, is a DWAI (with probation), done from the more serious DUI. The prosecutor has tendered the offer, so it remains to be seen whether the client recognizes that it is about as well as he would probably do at a trial.
How do you know a particular plumber is honest? How do yo know if a particular pool cleaner is honest? Why are you putting the word “honest” in quotes?
People act as if it’s one guy—the defense attorney–who is standing between justice and injustice.
Except it’s not one guy. It’s the whole system. The cops have to do their job. The prosecutors have to do their job. The judges have to do their job. The prison guards have to do their job. The legislators have to do their job. And the defense attorneys have to do their job.
If the only thing standing between a scumbag criminal going free to commit more crimes is the defense attorney doing their job, that’s not the defense attorney’s fault. That’s the fault of the cops and prosecutors and legislators, who failed to do their jobs properly. The defense attorney is no more responsible for putting a scumbag back of the street than the prison guard who unlocks the cell door and lets that scumbag walk out of prison. The prison guard doesn’t decide who stays in prison and who walks, and neither should the defense attorney.
We don’t have a system where it’s the defense attorney’s job to decide to throw the case if they think the defendant is a scumbag who doesn’t deserve a fair trial. We don’t give scumbags a fair trail because the scumbags deserve a fair trial, we give them a fair trial because all of us deserve to live in a country where everyone gets a fair trial. There’s no asterisk there that says “unless you’re a scumbag”. There are countries where that asterisk exists, and what it means is that the authorities can do as they please, because anyone who opposes the authorities is by definition a scumbag, and therefore doesn’t deserve to be treated fairly.
Everyone deserves to be treated fairly, even the people who don’t deserve to be treated fairly. If we’re going to decide who gets fair treatment and who doesn’t deserve fair treatment, we’d have to have some sort of fair system to decide that, right? We wouldn’t want to treat someone unfairly when they deserve to be treated fairly, right? So we’d have to have some fair and impartial process to decide who deserves fair treatment and who doesn’t, right? And what would that fair and impartial process be? And once we’ve gone through the trouble of going through a fair and impartial process to decide if we’re going to bother treating someone fairly or unfairly, what’s the point of continuing? If we decide that the guy deserves to be treated fairly because he’s not a scumbag, why continue the process? Why not just let the person who deserves a fair trial go free? And if we decide that the guy doesn’t deserve to be treated fairly, then why continue the process either? Just cut straight to the punishment.
And so that’s what we have. We don’t have a impartial justice system to protect the scumbags, we can agree they don’t deserve it. We have an impartial justice system for everyone else. And that includes not jumping to conclusions about someone’s scumbag status, and actually going through a fair process to decide whether they’re a scumbag or not.
Also, on the honesty issue, if a defense attorney claims to be representing his client’s best interests but decides to throw the case, isn’t that actually dishonest? It seems to be what the ‘honesty’ people think should happen, but is actually the dishonest choice.
This type of defense apparently works in Wyoming, too. (I lived there.) A woman crashed her car into a utility pole on a country road. When cops arrived, they found an empty half-pint bottle of vodka in the front passenger seat. The woman’s blood alcohol level was quite high, so they arrested her for DWI. She claimed she was so nervous after the accident that she knocked back the entire bottle to steady her nerves. There was no way to prove otherwise, so she got off.
It ticked me off at the time because her name was similar to mine, and for awhile, some people assumed I was stupid enough to drive drunk and then cowardly enough to lie about it.
Wow, guess I’m still a little bitter.
Wow, I’d be a lot more than just a “little” bitter in that situation. eep.
My bolding.
And how do you know that, without talking to a lawyer? Do you just take the word of the police or prosecutor?
One of the functions of defence counsel is to provide an independent assessment of the facts and law alleged by the prosecution.
What would you do if you spoke to a lawyer, gave them the entire story, and at the end of it, your lawyer said: “I think the prosecution has overcharged. Based on what you’ve told me, I think we have a very good chance to have these charges reduced.”
What do you do? You want to plead guilty to the offence you’ve committed. That’s fine. But what if your defence counsel says that you’ve not committed the crime the prosecution has charged you with? Do you ignore your lawyer’s advice because that’s not “honest”?
There’s a lot of grey area in the law, and the degree of legal liability will depend heavily on the facts of your particular case.
Same with sentencing. There’s often quite a broad range of possible sentences for a particular offence. If the prosecution is asking for five years, and your lawyer says that under her reading of the court cases, that’s way too high and there’s a good argument the appropriate sentence is two years, do you still plead out and take whatever sentence the prosecutor asks for?
To put the question another way: Do you accept the prosecuting lawyer’s assessment of the appropriate charge because government lawyers are honest, and reject the defence lawyer’s recommendation because defence lawyers are only “honest”?
Sure.
I’ve been a lawyer since 1992 and the vast majority of the other lawyers I’ve met along the way have been good, honest, hard-working people who only want to get the best possible result for their clients within the bounds of the law and the ethical code. There are certainly exceptions, but no more, I think, than you’d find in any other profession, human nature being what it is.
“There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.” – Abraham Lincoln
Looks like a good time for a lawyer joke … this 35-year-old lawyer dies and comes before the Pearly Gates, “what the hell, I’m only 35-years-old?”; St Gabriel pulls out the time sheets “according to these, you’re 105”.
On the one side, lawyers are bound by a Code of Ethics rather than a body of written law, and enforcement is left to the various bar associations … in effect, lawyers are self-policing and there are problems with that … a lawyer’s conduit has to be quite agree just before any criminal action is taken … boy, try and retain a lawyer to sue another lawyer, you’re better off doubling down on a 13 hand …
On the other side, lawyers get filthy rich even staying within the strict letter of this Code of Conduit … they have a HUGE motivation to continue staying within this Code …
On balance the system works most of the time, and appellant courts are allowed to send cases back down because of “inadequate legal representation” …
Perception is another problem … half the lawyers you meet in a court of law are zealously fighting against you, itchin’ to get you on the stand and rip you a new asshole … it’s hard in these situations to sit back and say to yourself that the lawyer is just doing his job, and he’s actually pretty good at it … I walked out of my divorce trial wanting to give her everything, her lawyer was that good … luckily my own lawyer was in an uncontrolled rage over the judgement so I never got the chance … woot …
It’s the worst possible system with the only exception being every other system …
For fun, I would add an anecdotical data point: in Spain, under Franco, the standard in trials was not “innocent unless proven guilty”. It was guilty unless proven innocent, and it was the job of the defense attorney to prove beyond doubt that his client was not guilty.
It was like a “Phoenix Wright” game, only in real life and with horrendously serious stakes.
See post 43.
Ask a mathematician how much 2 plus 2 is, and she’ll say “4”.
Ask a statistician how much 2 plus 2 is, and she’ll say “4…give or take 1”.
Ask a lawyer how much 2 plus 2 is, and she will turn down the lights, close the blinds, turn up the radio, lean in close and whisper “How much do you want it to be?”
Thanks for your public service announcement that all lawyers are crooks, Czarcasm. Glad to see that ignorance and prejudice are alive and well on the Dope.
So far the only support you present for your position is the actions of your father, part of which you rightly characterize as abuse that left lasting effects. This is hardly a reason to tar an entire profession and do everything possible to avoid the criminal justice system.