Certainly malpractice insurance for lawyers is a significant part of the their overhead costs.
It’s not my area, but here’s a blog that collects legal malpractice news and reports.
I think you’re confusing relevant with equivalent. It is clearly relevant, it is clearly not equivalent.
This thread gets my vote for most educated pitting of the month.
The OP reminds me of a whole class of professionals who deserve pitting but never are. Fucking translators. Maybe not the whole class of them (I work with some seemingly decent ones) but those who work for/within the court and police system. Dirt-fucking-bags. There are plenty of opportunities for translators in other fields, but it is beyond me why someone would stoop so low as to translate for some shithead convict/guilty fuck. Some pestilent cocknocker commits a crime in America and drains our tax dollars (if it’s in the public system—but that’s a whole ‘nother thread) or gets some two-bit polylingual bottomfeeder to help him get off. Fuck that shit—I don’t give a crap if you only speak a few words of the language or don’t really have a clue what’s going on, if you commit a crime you don’t deserve some nambypamby titbiter to use years of schooling (probably from a tax-supported state school or through tax-supported Federal grants) to let you try and game the system. The very worst are those who seem to like their job, or those who don’t like it but are basically whoring themselves to use their knowledge to translate idioms or expressions or get some nuance across.
Look, I’m not heartless, but I don’t see why anyone deserves more than a fucking dictionary. Or maybe a little more (access to Babblefish maybe?), but that’s not my point. My point was to pit the unethical shits who make a depraved living off translation.
Our current legal system is better than no legal system, to be sure. Nobody is saying otherwise. To twist that argument and say “would you rather we go back to stoning people?” like the asshat on the first page excludes the miles of middle ground between “nothing” and “the evil and corrupt self-serving and destructive system we have now”.
There is no profession I am aware of that has an ethical code so completely removed from common morality as lawyers. These people have convinced themselves that it’s wrong to come forth with evidence that proves an innocent man has been in prison for 20 years, because it would mean forcing THEIR client to be prosecuted for the crimes he admitted to committing. These people, with a straight face, are expected by their code of ethics to stand in front of sane people and suggest that rape doesn’t cause the victim any real damage. These people will use legal pressure to force poor people who may or may not be guilty of a crime to plea bargain because the alternative is guaranteed jail time just WAITING for a trial. Their ethical code tells them to find loopholes to help their clients avoid paying taxes or paying a fair wage. Their ethical code tells them it’s okay to allow and even encourage a deceptive interpretation of what actually happened. Legal ethics has absolutely no resemblence to morality, and directly conflicts with it too often.
This has gone far beyond what I expected.
Please note I have no difficulty with the legal profession and I think the majority of them have some degree of ethics and are quite technically sound.
As has been mentioned above, I do abhor those who represent their clients with false evidence even with the knowledge that their client is lying to them. I do not say that is happening in this case.
Nevertheless I am somewhat amazed that anyone in the legal field can say a young girl has been pack raped has not suffered any permanent harm. That may not become apparent for some time.
I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s odd that the argument being made is that it was ‘only’ about an hour of rape, 14 on one. Aren’t most rapes one on one? Over in under an hour? To present this case as preferable because the victim didn’t have her teeth kicked in, and because biology blessed her with a hole… it’s difficult to imagine a male victim being sodomized but also described as ‘unharmed.’ ‘Assault with a blunt object’ (or 14) is looking better and better as an alternative to the term ‘rape.’
That being said, I wouldn’t expect any less from the lawyers in the article and imagine it’s up to someone else to argue that yes, being repeatedly violated for 55 minutes by different people has been known to cause lasting harm. The STDs alone, I imagine, will be a nice little lifelong gift.
I’m coming into this a little late, but I have to say that I’m a little surprised at the attitude of some of you toward lawyers who are doing their jobs well and within the bounds of ethics. I have been a public defender for little over 20 years (and yes, I’m a real lawyer). I have never lied to a judge, a prosecutor, a jury or a client. I have, in fact, represented a LOT of people who I knew to be guilty, and gotten many of them off. I have had juries acquit my clients, and tell me that they knew they were guilty, but the state just didn’t prove it, and the didn’t have any choice but to find them “not guilty”. Which is exactly what I argue in those cases- that there’s just not enough evidence to convict.
I have had police officers in cases where I either got acquittals or evidence that was obtained illegally thrown out get in my face and call me every name in the book. Many years ago, a guy that I had been dating for a few months actually broke up with me because he coudn’t take the fact that I do what I do for a living. I negotiated a life sentence for someone who the State was considering seeking the death penalty on, and probably would have gotten it, a couple of years ago. Probably 2/3 of the employees at the courthouse didn’t speak to me for days. I have been the subject of angry letters to the editor.
Most of my clients, frankly, dislike me. They feel like they’re stuck with someone who “works for the state” and won’t do anything for them. I have been spit on, cursed at, threatened, sued (not successfully) and lied to, and about, by clients. I got a nasty, obscentiy-filled letter every week for months from a guy who was charged with murder, telling me that I wasn’t doing anything for him. When he got found not guilty, he didn’t even thank me (I did give his letters back to him, though).
If I was in the position of having a client about whom I could only say one remotely positive thing, and that was that there is no permanent physical damage inflicted during a rape, that is exactly what I would say. There are two things that are mantras of most public defenders- one is “You do what you can with what you have”, and the other is “We, the unappreciated, are accomplishing the impossible for the ungrateful”.
I can see how it’s difficult to understand how I can sleep at night, or why on earth I keep doing this. Quite simply, as trite as it sounds, everyone- EVERYONE, no matter who they are or what they are charged with, is entitled to a zealous defense. If the guilty don’t get it, neither will the innocent. And the next time you read or hear a story about a lawyer who is zealously defending the worst of the worst, remember that if you ever get arrested, you will be entitled to a zealous defense.
Whether someone on a message board thinks you deserve it or not.
Excellent post, katie.
Permanent physical harm is not the same as permanent harm. Nobody has even suggested that the victim didn’t suffer severe psychological trauma.
baloney. I can summarize the whole thing in two sentences.
“I am a giant toilet - disgusting and full of shit. But even though I’m filthy and undesirable, you’re going to have to use me sometime, because there’s no alternative.”
Grow up. The “alternative” is to do away with the adverserial legal process and replace it with, I dunno, trial by ordeal or something. And won’t that be fun?
Mosier, you’d kill all the lawyers, wouldn’t you? And you know what happens when we do. The devil runs loose.
No, the devil has to be supplied with a lawyer, for the law must be blind, or there is no hope of justice.
(For Mosier’s sake, I cite Henry VI.)
Kate, I agree with your position. But taking this case as an example, where would you consider things as ‘above and beyond’? Lying to the court? I’ve seen that fairly blatantly recently in a civil trial. (Groklaw, SCO vs Novell/IBM/The World) Hiding evidence? Making claims of one thing in one trial, and another in another?
I take it you also agree with Der Tris (?) comments about the overall vileness of everyone who joins the military.
That’s not at all what was argued in the OP case.
And somebody, farther up the thread, said that they thought the defense lawyers’ argument was that because the rape lasted less than an hour, there must not have been any physical harm. I think that’s just a misreading of the article. My reading was that these were two independent facts that had already been established in the finding-of-fact phase of the trial. As I understand the system (which is to say, vaguely) the defense lawyers, in the sentencing phase, are not allowed to speculate or make inferences on whether the victim suffered lasting physical damage. They can only point to facts that have already been established. Is this correct? Is it reasonable to assume that the lack of lasting physical harm in this case is an established fact?
How come you quoted a post that posed a question you had no intention of answering?
RO isn’t about answering questions. It’s about shouting new ones.
:smack:
You’d think after all this time I’d know that.
I’m not sure what that has to do with this pitting, but no, I don’t agree with him.
And no, I wouldn’t “kill all the lawyers” either. I wouldn’t kill anyone just for being a bad person.
Lying to the court is definitely out of line. Not sure what you mean by “hiding evidence”- for example, if I have interviewed a state’s witness and they tell me something that is bad for my client, but they don’t mention it during their testimony, I’m certainly not going to bring that out. I don’t have to make the state’s case for them. I don’t consider that to be “hiding evidence” but I can see how someone else might.
Heh. You folks are quick. I was going to comment on the new industry that would spring up if Trial by Combat was the legal system adopted.
“King Stahlmans’ Trial Champions: It’s better to know me, and not need me, then it is to need me, and not know me.”