In this thread, Oakminster writes
How do you deal with it? Both during the trial and after? Do you go to the judge and say, “I’d like a recess; I’m having trouble maintaining my professional composure”?
I’m a public defender. I have had my job since I passed the bar in the fall of 2007. For most of that time I was on the juvenile court team, which meant dealing with juvenile defendants as well as crimes with juvenile victims or family member victims.
I have had to do what Oakminster described. It didn’t bother me nearly to the degree he describes, and I’m not sure why. I’ll also admit that I’m not the most vigorous cross-examiner. The parents in a child sex case are going to give you withering looks no matter what you do.
I’m very detached in my work. It’s a logic puzzle to me, especially while I’m in the middle of it. I really enjoy legal research and trying to figure out some new angle on the evidence and setting up a case to be fought out in the appellate courts if necessary. Most of the time, if someone is really guilty there isn’t a whole lot I can do to get them acquitted. So you try and knock down the charges or plead down the charges or just put on some good mitigation. Sometimes a little compassion, although some days I don’t really have a lot to give.
The case that still haunts me involved a baby who was neglected and wound up weighing eight pounds at four months old. Almost died. I defended the mother. Sometimes I think back, shudder, and say to myself “I have no soul.” Last I heard, the baby was doing wonderfully in foster care, caught back up to where he should be developmentally, so there’s that.
I also have had cases I’ve beaten where I did think the person was guilty. It usually doesn’t bother me, but in cases where I know a juvenile is going to go out and get into worse trouble, or where I feel like this other guy may well wind up in the news for shooting someone in ten years’ time, It does stick with me. It doesn’t stop me from doing my job, though. I’m frequently disgusted with clients, but not typically with myself, because I firmly believe I have a role to play and that’s exactly what I do.
One thing that helps is that you frequently encounter misbehaviors by the police, overzealous prosecutors, and judges who just don’t give a damn what you say or what the law is. Having an enemy to fight who isn’t the victim makes it easier. And there are plenty who are the enemy… people who come in with the “victim” label but are nothing of the kind. Lots more of them than you’d think.
Maybe I shouldn’t be answering your thread because I don’t really know. 
I’m glad I found a job I enjoy, which suits me, and to which I am suited since so few people are. I’m passionate about it and I can’t see myself practicing most any other kind of law.
Everyone deserves a lawyer.
Even criminals.
If it weren’t for people like us, you’d be living in a police state. We’re here to make sure cops do their jobs properly and don’t violate your rights with impunity.
Really like the responses. I ended up in civil litigation but I loved my short time as a Certified Law Student defending indigent clients on misdemeanors. It is true that bad people get off, etc., etc., but if the presumption of innocence means anything, it means that someone has to defend people who have done, or are accused of doing, horrible crimes. It makes sense to me that many people cannot imagine defending those accused of horrible crimes, especially those that are most likely guilty. It is essential that someone is willing to.
The question is not “Why do you do it” or “How can you bring yourself to defend a monster”, it’s “How do you deal with it”.
The OP has given no indication that the criminals in question don’t deserve defence. They asked “How do you deal with it” in response to Oakminster’s post stating that he still had nightmares about having to cross-examine an innocent 10yo who was the victim of a horrible crime, presumably as the lawyer for the defendant.
You do your job. And accept the price that comes with it, because that’s who you are. I’ve defended some bad people. I’ve also represented victims against bad people. At the end of the day, you go home and sometimes you escape reality for a little while–games, movies, intoxicants–whatever it takes to recover, because you’re going to do it again the next day.
Even lawyers.
But that is how I’m dealing with it. By helping bad people, I’m helping all people. I go macro, not micro. I’ve never gone home thinking “I did a really terrible thing,” so there’s not much to “deal with.”
Especially lawyers.
IANAL, but I actually can’t imagine having a hard time with defending people accused of horrible crimes. I really, really like the idea of trials including skillful spokespeople to develop and present arguments from both sides, and also including other separate skillful people to draw conclusions from the arguments. It is obvious to me that justice is unlikely if we only consider arguments developed and presented by the involved parties themselves - and also obvious that trials with skillful spokespeople require skillful spokespeople.
If this is offensively oblivious to people who are lawyers and have a very different view of it, I do apologize.
Well, I wonder if Quartz’s post was influenced by the recent Levi Bellfield trial, where the parents of Milly Dowler, especially the Dad, were grilled in an extremely hostile way, arguably adding to his torment. IMO the defence did a really good thing - they ensured that Bellfield really was convicted beyond reasonable doubt by bringing up every single doubtful thing about Milly Dowler’s life and having them dismissed in court.
But still, surely it would be hard for a lawyer, emotionally, to actually do that? I mean, if you really thought that the parent had actually been the killer, not the accused, then you’d be going in guns blazing, but this was just about establishing reasonable doubt and putting up a robust defence.
The father was never in the picture as the culprit. Yet still the barrister had to go up there and talk to the Dad about how he’d had porn magazines and his daughter had found them, and she was traumatised by this, and didn’t he think that circumstances might have been different if she hadn’t been?
Like I said above, doing that serves justice eventually. But how do lawyers deal with doing things like that? You have to use emotion to make those defences, which must make it even more difficult to view it in a purely logical ‘robust defence’ way.
Not consciously, but I have read Inspector Gadget’s article about Bellfield.
I heard a terrible joke the other day, it was racist but I could see it could be applied to any group.
What is the similarity between a (insert group here) defence lawyer with cancer and a car with Air Conditioning?
You can’t tell from the outside by looking, but it’s reassuring to know that they have it.
I remember asking my brother this very question.
His answer was: I believe that the fundamental concept of the rule of law is that EVERYONE is entitled to a competent defence. And I am honoured to play my role in that process, knowing that I am helping to ensure a fair and just society. This may mean I defend people Zi find distasteful; but however distasteful I find them, this does not match my awe and respect for the legal system I am serving by playing my role in it and ensuring that in this country everybody gets a fair trial.
Did that answer the question for you, though? It doesn’t for me. Maybe it does for the people who have to do the job - maybe they can compartmentalise the role, like actors.
This is essentially the same answer Drain Bead gave, but explains the thought process a bit more, so it doesn’t come off as a snarky dismissal of the OP’s question like Drain Bead’s first response did.
The way I think of it is that defense lawyers are the peer review that the state has to go through to to convict somebody of a crime. The defender is testing a case, not so much defending the accused as people, but making sure the state is meeting its burden.
The prosecutor is building a bridge of evidence from the defendant to the crime. The defender’s job is to test that bridge and make sure it’s solid. He jumps up and down on it, shakes it, kicks it, hits it with a hammer, looks for flaws and weaknesses, makes sure it’s perfect. If the bridge is solid, it will hold up, and more vigorously the defender tests it, the better a job he’s doing for the public. The worse the crime, the stronger the bridge needs to be, and the more vigorously it needs to be tested. If the bridge falls apart, that’s the state’s fault, not the tester’s. If anything, a defense attorney should be disgusted with the state for not building a better bridge, not with himself for finding the flaws.
This is basically what I was trying to get at in my long-winded answer. 
Damn, Dio, I gotta say that that’s the best damn answer to this question (which I’ve pondered many times) that I’ve heard. By “best”, I mean that it’s one that I can understand with my heart and gut as well as with my brain. I can logically understand other explanations (such as the macro view mentioned above), but it’s not am answer that would ever work for ME, personally.