When a celebrity or a pseudo-celebrity gets in trouble with the law or another party, their attorney is usually the one that makes a “They did nothing wrong” or “We need to wait until all facts are out” blah blah blah kind of statement. Is there a legal reason for having the attorney make the statement instead of the individual themselves or is it just to avoid having the celebrity to appear in public? I don’t think it’s the latter since many of the statements are written and delivered directly to the media.
I’ve always presumed that the attorney is allowed to lie or exaggerate. Or at least, if he does lie or exaggerate, he won’t be liable for perjury or give up any 5th Amendment rights.
It’s also possible that the celebrity has only told the attorney part of the story, meaning that an attorney may have plausible deniability if it later turns out that what they announced to the public was false.
But I’m talking about public statements, not those made in court. AFAIK, lying to the public is not a crime and I don’t believe that the 5th amendment would apply either. Of course, IANAL.
Someone who is accused of doing wrong is often advised by counsel not to make any statements whatsoever, public or otherwise. Usually an attorney representing the celebrity makes a statement on their behalf, which allows them to remain silent on the matter.
It’s his/her job (at least a part of it). See mouthpiece. It gives added (perceived) credibility to the statement.
[QUOTE=Thesaurus.com]
Synonyms for attorney
noun lawyer
advocate
barrister
counsel
counselor
DA
fixer
front
lip
mouthpiece
pleader
proxy
[/QUOTE]
Attorneys are usually better at not saying something stupid (and making things worse) than celebrities are.
Not to mention that an attorney will not “stray from the script” when pressed or baited by reporters.
Yeah, this.
People tend to get emotional when their future is on the line and emotional people do and say things they might regret.
From an attorney’s perspective, your best bet to get someone off is to lay out for the jury the elements of the crime and then show how the person’s actions do not meet that standard. In an ideal case, you just show that they didn’t do anything at all, but many high profile cases regard events where we know something happened, just not whether it was a crime. (Zimmerman, for example).
The goal, then, is to make that story as coherent as possible. If your case is going to hinge on proving a, b and c, then it’s actually harmful to you if the defendant goes around talking about x, y and z. At best, it confuses your position. At worst, it conflicts with something you said.
IANAL, but… Presumably too any public statements by the defendant can be played in court by the prosecution as evidence.
A statement by an attorney (“here is my point of view - Fred did nothing wrong”) is hearsay or opinion and cannot be used as evidence; and of course the lawyer cannot be questioned about whether or how they knew what Fred did or did not do; what their client told them is privileged information.
The celebrity’s publicist, however, is not covered by attorney-client privilege and can be put on the stand to explain what the celebrity directly told them. Hence the “don’t discuss this with anyone but your lawyer” instructions. I assume if the publicist is informed by the lawyer, then that is third-party and so hearsay.
Anything the defendant says could be used against him/her (because of a hearsay exception). Not so for what the lawyer says - it’s hearsay without an exception.
You can’t talk yourself out of it, but -if you are innocent- you can talk yourself into a crime. Or into more crimes, if not so innocent.
Thats not true. Many times police accept a defense at the time of the events.
And I don’t mean to reduce the talk to petty crime.
eg Sometimes someone who has killed another has avoided prosecution by explaining it was self defense.
If no defense is given it has to go to court though doesn’t it.
Of course, if the police officer chooses to harass you, or in a show of support for relatives , and so on, they can still take it to court even when its sure you will be found innocent.
Once again, this.
A celebrity accused, being under fire from the press, and in the heat of the moment, might say something that will come back to bite him or her. Their lawyer, speaking for them and knowing what could come back to bite him or her in court, won’t let that happen. There is a reason many questions are answered with “My client has no comment at this time,” or similar; and it usually is to make sure that the accused gets a fair hearing in a real court, and not in the court of public opinion.
For the precise example given by the OP, it is probably primarily what **Spoons **and **PorchePine **said and nothing to do with tricky issues about privilege, evidence etc. A bland fob off statement could in theory be delivered by the client but it’s too risky.
Explaining yourself while being hounded by a pack of slavering media firing deliberately awkward, loaded questions at you *without *you saying anything that can be twisted into something against your interests is very, very difficult at the best of times, let alone when you are personally involved. So attempting to explain yourself is a bad idea, but people who have been accused of something are typically desperate to exonerate themselves. The end result is that even if your client believes that they can stand in front of the media and just recite something bland and then stop - as rehearsed- there is a very high probability that in the heat of the moment they will not be able to avoid the temptation to blurt out something unwise.
I wonder if it also has a psychological advantage: insulating the client from the inevitable resentment attendant on not satisfying people’ curiosity.
There is a similar advantage, I suspect, in being represented by a lawyer in court instead of representing oneself (where the latter is even possible): There may be things advantageous to your party, like trying to impeach a witness whom the court likes or pities, or motions that mean a lot of work for everyone, that will generate resentment (that the court cannot acknowledge but, being human, cannot help feeling). Better to have that emotion directed at the lawyer than his client.
I think the main idea is to have it said by ‘neutral party who’s been trained to be careful in what they say’, rather than ‘possibly emotional person directly involved’.
Perhaps also there’s the idea that Entertainment Tonight, People Magazine, etc will be far less likely to turn up and cover some boring lawyer reading something than they would to cover an ACTUAL CELEBRITY (even if the CELEBRITY was only making a bland statement). And generally, the celebrity is going to want as little coverage of the whole thing as possible.
And finally, the celebrity’s publicity team may prefer to avoid having the celebrity do boring things in the public eye, just to keep up the glamorous image. So reading bland statements (even if they weren’t about the celebrity) might be seen as detrimental to their image brand, and these kinds of things should be passed off to some minion.