A similar issue was raised on The Practice last year. Lindsay is defending a man on some minor crime. The defendant keeps wanting to confess to get it over with, but Lindsay insists on his keeping quiet through the preliminary hearing so that she can at least take a shot at getting it kicked there, which she does.
At the same time, Donnel et al are defending a man for murder, and things are going very badly for them. During the course of her defense, Lindsay discovers that her client actually killed the victim in the other trial. She searches for a way to help the innocent man in the other trial, but can’t without implicating her own client, so she keeps quiet hoping the other man will be aquitted. He’s found guilty.
Lindsay goes to Judge Hiller (the judge always portrayed as being the fairest and most knowledgeable about the law on the show) for advice, and presents the situation as a hypothetical involving a fellow attourney. Judge Hiller tells her that there is actually a provision in Massachusettes law covering this exact situation, and that an attourney may break privilege to prevent an innocent man from going to jail. She then advises Lindsay very strongly not to do this because it would A: be professional suicide and B: even thought the law allows it, it does not compel it, and Hiller thinks the law is wrong because it undermines one of the foundations of the criminal justice system, and therefore this law itself is unethical.
Another similar case occurred on LA Law. Abby (Michele Green) leaves the firm and starts her own practice. The only business she can get to pay the rent is defending drug dealers, which she does exceptionally well. She becomes quite prosperous, and quite popular among the drug dealing scum of Los Angeles, so much so that the DA’s office sets their sights on her. They attempt to indict her for some crime stemming from her knowingly recieving drug money (money laundering, I think). She insists on testifying before the grand jury investigation. Her defense is that since the DA didn’t convict her clients, they couldn’t prove that the money they paid her was drug money so they couldn’t make their prima facia case, and the grand jury refuses to indict.
I found it difficult to believe such a prosecution could even take place, and found the defense very implausible, but was nonetheless quite entertaining to watch.
I didn’t see the Practice episode either, but I was a fanatical fan of L.A. Law.
Abby had no way of knowing the money was drug money – although, as the DA argued, the fact that she was defending a accused drug dealer’s minions and getting her fees paid in cash, perhaps she should have twigged. But there was no confidence to reveal – as Abby told the grand jury, the only reason the DA knew she was getting paid in cash was that she reported all the cash transactions, as the law required her to do. And since her client had never been convicted of anything, Abby pointed out to the grand jury, when the DA asked them to believe that she was taking drug money, he was asking them to believe something he hadn’t been able to prove in court when he had the chance.
So - not quite the same; no real issue of professional ethics was on the line… not that LA Law didn’t tweak those bounderies. You may recall when Ann defended a psychiatrist against a wrongful death civil suit, brough by the parents of a young female patient of his who had been killed by another patient of his; the two were both participants in a group therapy session. The parents argued in the civil suit that the doctor was negligent in realizing what a danger the killer represented.
Ann wins the case, and during the case realizes that the confessed killer could not have possibly committed the crime. She is filled with zeal to get the wrongfully convicted man out of jail, and is asking her client, the doctor, who else in the group might have been the real killer. The doctor pauses for a moment and asks her, “You’re still my lawyer, right?” When Ann responds affirmatively, he reveals under privilege that HE was the murderer; that he and the young girl had been having sex, and she was going to go public. So not only did the doctor kill her, but manipulated the disturbed young man into believing that he, not the doctor, had killed the girl.
The doctor goes on to point out that Ann is now ethically bound NOT to start her investigation, or reveal his confidence; that what she says would be inadmissible in any event, and that even if she’s willing to throw away her career and be disbarred, he’d sue the firm and win - so she’d be throwing away all her colleagues’ careers.