I think the OP is flawed to begin with. Notoriety is a plus for an attorney. Representing , with zeal, a notorious client adds to a lawyer’s mystique.
ETA: There can be practical considerations, though. A friend had trouble finding a local lawyer willing to handle her divorce. Her husband was a well-known local lawyer under consideration for a magistrate seat. She found a lawyer outside of the area, though.
That was an issue in* United States v Galactus*.
Sorry, just too far-fetched. The more heinous the crime and loathsome the defendant, the more eager some lawyer will be to represent him/her, if only for the publicity and the chance to write a best-seller.
I thought of a way. Suppose the defendant is Satan himself. Literally Satan as defined by a well known book of fiction and children’s stories. Moreover, Satan threatens to have anyone who represents him burned in Hell for eternity. Somehow, the court has the means to arrest Satan and hold him, but they cannot block his supernatural power to damn to Hell individuals completely. This isn’t a hypothetical power, witnesses to this process can see the wormhole to hell open up underneath the victim and demonic hands reach up and drag the victim down, like the VFX in certain movies.
It seems like it would be easier for Satan to just threaten to damn the judge or the President or something, though, and get himself released from custody.
Also, in the case of a defendant that is this bad, what the government would do is the same thing they are doing with the Gitmo defendants. You would think it would be trivially easy for the government to convict terrorists in an ‘impartial’ federal court, especially ones who evidence says were direct confederates of Osama Bin Laden. But, for whatever reason, the government doesn’t want to do this, so they created the “military commission” scheme where each defendant gets a hearing before a kangaroo court to convict them.
Objections to this were raised, and the government wants to give the appearance of legitimacy to any resulting verdicts in order to use the death penalty, so 13 years later none of these people were convicted. Some might even be innocent!
Satan can’t damn individuals to hell of his own accord, only lead them astray. In Christian theology, sufficiently righteous individuals are able to overcome his influence. So a jury could be found that would be immune to his schemes–though whether they’d be impartial is another question. A better example would be a trial of Jesus Christ–though that did happen, and it’s made clear from the Gospels that there are those who will refuse to see what is before them.
Also, Satan has sovereign immunity as foreign royalty, i.e. the prince of darkness.
cf. United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971)
Does that apply to religions other than Christianity with a Satan-analogue?
My favorite paragraph from the case is “We note that the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint the required form of instructions for the United States
Marshal for directions as to service of process.”
The reference to the Devil and Daniel Webster was adorable.
Judge’s must giggle like children when they get to write stuff like this.
This isn’t my specialty, but I would be surprised if there was a religion that placed agency over a person’s fate in the hands of neither God nor man. It wouldn’t make sense from a theological standpoint, it seems–but that’s not to say that there isn’t a religion somewhere sometime where this doesn’t hold true.
(that was too many negatives for one paragraph. I’m not sure it makes sense)
In the real world, there are frequently lots of potential jurors available who won’t have seen or heard about the case. Especially if they change venue.
But if there aren’t, the Court will drop back to asking potential jurors something like “Can you ignore anything you may have seen or heard about this case, and render an impartial verdict based only on the evidence presented here in Court?”
And they will eventually impanel a jury composed of people who believable answer Yes to that question.
What about Manicheism? The evil spirit is supposed to be as powerful as the “good” one, no?
I’ve read of it happening in the news, but I can’t provide a cite for it and can’t find anything on google right now. Perhaps I’ve conflated two different stories, but I’m pretty sure my memory is at least partially accurate. I’ll see what I can dig up.
I’ve seen it happen on TV. Maybe LA Law?
Yes, it’s extremely common but not a requirement. There have even been US Supreme Court justices that did not graduate from law school. http://www.supremecourt.gov/faq.aspx#faqgi2
You already know and admit this is a purely hypothetical question.
But since there were lawyers willing to represent Charles Manson and Nidal Hasan and Timothy McVeigh, just who can you imagine that’s so much worse that nobody would defend him?