That’s not the attorney knowingly introducing perjured testimony, though. There’s a huge difference betweem “story I personally find not credible” and “story I know for a fact to be false.” It may seem like academic hair-splitting, but it isn’t at all.
Frequently I’ll have a client that tells me a story so preposterous that one has to wonder how they’re keeping a straight face. I’ll listen pattiently and tell them “I’m not saying that your story isn’t true, but i’d be lying if i told you it that it’s believable. It’s not. It’s really, really laughably awful. It sounds like the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard, and if that’s your story you’d better take the DA’s offer. Your choice, though.” If he wants to get on the stand and tell an unbelievable story, that’s his business. My opinion of his credibility is not evidence and is completely irrelevant.
That’s an entirely different situation from a client telling a story that I know for a fact is a lie. If I have evidence that the client is lying, I don’t merely find his story not credible, I know it to be perjury. If that’s the case, everything changes. I have to dissuade him from testifying, or if I can’t, seek removal from the case, or if I can’t, request that he testify in narrative. As a general rule of tactics an attorney shouldn’t try to sell a story they wouldn’t buy themselves, but sometimes they have no choice. A lawyer who stands up at close and says, “well, you heard my client’s BS story, I don’t believe it either, but whatever, there it is, thanks, goodnight” isn’t exactly doing their job.
For someone who isn’t trying to say that lawyers are liars, you seem to say it quite clearly:
But, to respond to your other point:
If the circumstances were as you describe, and no reasonable person could have believed this client, then this particular attorney may well have been violating the MRPC. See comment 8 to Rule 3.3:
So, if this alibi was an “obvious falsehood”, and the lawyer argued it in the ordinary fashion, he probably violated the MRPC. Two points, however:
1.) The fact that you know an attorney who violated the MRPC, if true, does not mean that the rules themselves are at odds with normal human morality - and that is the position you took earlier. Do you still stand by that position?
2.) Reasonable people disagree. The fact that you found the alibi statement to be unpersuasive does not mean that it necessarily reached the level of an “obvious falsehood” that no reasonable person could believe.
But the difference is that the doctor is breaking both his professional ethics and real world ethics/morality.
The REALTOR’S code of ethics prohibits them from not disclosing information.
But the attorney, when he repeated his client’s bullshit alibi over and over, knowing it was completely implausible and was contradicted by all the evidence, was following his professional code of ethics, while violating real world ethics/morality. That’s the difference, and it’s why these arguments keep coming up.
Behind Door A is 3-months chained in a closet, your teeth kicked in, your breasts cut off, hair pulled out, and being denied all but minimal food/water while being raped and beaten repeatedly (for 3 months!) by 14 men.
Behind Door B is rape by the same 14 men, but for 3 mins each, no infliction of physical harm beyond the rape, and then you are set free.
Is there no difference? If you were forced to make a choice between these two, are these so equivalent in your mind that you would leave the choice to an arbitrary coin-flip?
The same difference must be considered in sentencing. Nobody is saying either is a nice alternative, simply that one happened and one did not, and thus the corresponding Sentence C or D is applicable.
Well, Mr. Excellent, you have given me something to think about. To me, the alibi was an obvious falsehood. Reasonable people will disagree as to whether I am a reasonable person, but I would note that 12 others believed beyond a reasonable doubt that it was an obvious falsehood. At the time, the lawyer involved told me that he was acting within his professional ethics, and I believed him, leading to my argument in this case. Now you have shown me evidence that perhaps he was not being ethical. I suspect he would disagree, with the words “reasonable belief”, “knowingly,” and “obvious” being the sticking points which will never be resolved, since you can never know what another person reasonably believed, and “obvious” is subjective.
This is me, trying again to be reasonable and truthful.
Lawyers, by definition, are not finders of fact. It is no practicing lawyer’s job to determine the objective veracity of any statement made to them by a client. There are specific people charged with that duty in the legal system - either a judge or a jury (depending on various circucmstances). Lawyers are well and truly aware that it is not their job to determine the objective veracity of a client’s statements. Therefore, a lawyer’s personal opinion regarding the veracity of a client’s statements are not relevant to the process in any material way. It’s no more a defense attorney’s place to let their personal opinon of the defendant color their performance of their duty than it would be a police officer’s place to let their personal opinion of the defendant color their factual testimony. Or, in the case of a jury trial, the place of a judge to allow his or her personal opinion of the defendant to color the performance of his or her duties to ensure the trial is fair and objective. The only person involved in a trial whose opinion of the veracity of the defendant’s statements actually matters is the finder of fact.
There are some exceptions if a lawyer has evidence outside his or her personal opinion that his or her client plans to commit perjury. pravnik described what’s required of an attorney in that position. There are, in fact, whole reams of case law and instructive examples covering what the appropriate ethical action is in that case - and if a lawyer ever isn’t totally sure what the ethical call is, there are actually 1-800 numbers he or she can call to get an anonymous advisory opinion from the state bar ethics committee.*
As to the OP: the argument that the attorney in that article made was well within the bounds of ethical behavior given the phase that trial was in. Pointing out the ways in which their client’s behavior didn’t merit the harshest possible of a range of punishments is a part of their job. There’s nothing unethical about pointing out that the victim didn’t suffer lasting physical injury - that’s a part of the overall picture of the crime and something that absolutely needs to be considered during sentencing proceedings.
My comment to Contra actually had not a damn thing to do with the OP or this debate - it was a tangential aside. It is my personal opinion that the meme that a rape victim is a de facto emotional cripple forevah as a result of their experience is more hurtful than helpful in many, many instances. Some people make full recoveries from horrible assaults - and to assume that this particular individual didn’t sort of chafes me. I deplore that particular assumption.
*Or there are in the state where I graduated law school, and I would be awfully surprised if other states didn’t have something similar. I no longer practice, so I couldn’t say for sure one way or another since I haven’t had any ethical quandries which would lead me to need to call for an opinion. My ethics prof actually referred to this service as the “OMG WTF” line.
Perhaps the sentence he received was a little more because, as the caption under his photograph says, he was “jailed for leading gang rapes.”
If the implication is true that he instigated the rape then he moves up on the skill described by others in terms of brutality, length and other factors. Committing rape is bad is enough but rallying others to do so?
Is my understanding correct that he received a 15-year sentence in the case that’s being appealed, but 31 years total for the three rapes he is said to have instigated, down after other appeals from 55 years ?
Is my understanding correct that he received a 15-year sentence in the case that’s being appealed (and subject of the article in the OP), but 31 (wiki says 28) years total for the three rapes he is said to have instigated, down after other appeals from 55 years? This, after an initial reduction to 46 years. A slight hijack, but it’s interesting to note this guy’s behaviior, both before, att he time of and after sentencing. What a sociopath. What does he want, a cookie for what he’s done.
That being said, the attorneys, in the interests of zelous representation, have done nothing wrong or unethical. Immoral from an everyday, man-on-the-street standpoint, but under the law, entirely reasonable.
You then cannot conduct and “affirmative defense”-this means that you are basically admiting, yeah, my guy did do all of this stuff-but I have to make the APPEARANCE of defending him!
Isn’t that signalling to the jury to convict?
You know what they all have in common? You can find a lawyer to sue them. Hell, they’ll come to you if a case makes the paper.
Now, let a lawyer mess up and who will you find to sue him? Legal malpractice is just as real as it is in any of the fields you mentioned, but it somehow never comes to trial. Why is that?
I agree. They have to do this, and* to some extent* we can also blame the DA. After all, the DA certainly could have made a deal in this case, then this defense would never have risen.
It comes to trial quite frequently – and it’s an amazingly common claim in criminal appeals work. Ineffective assistance of counsel is one of the more common claims of error on appeal.
OK, I could be talking out my ass. Every guy I know who’s been through a divorce hates lawyers, so being one, I admit prejudice. However, it seems to me that we should be hearing about lawyers losing gazillion dollar settlements like we hear about doctors if it’s that common. Is malpractice insurance putting lawyers out of business like it does doctors?
