a public defender

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Grits has another great post (sorry, I have nothing original today) about Anderson Cooper’s upcoming 360 segment about snitching. According to Grits, the segment seems rather lightweight and I’d tend to agree. It involves a single interview of a rapper “Cam’ron” who states unequivocally that he would never, ever snitch.

Grits points to some very good posts about snitching and effectively argues that the 360 segment seems sensationalist more than anything else.

I’m going to put the “lawyer” spin on this. I’ve encountered more than a few criminal defense attorneys who state that they will “never represent snitches” and in fact have told clients as much. What do you guys think? Would you represent a snitch, when it would benefit him by reducing his sentence? I think I would certainly consider it.

A (lone, thus far) comment to Grit’s post raises another interesting question: Would you snitch on a fellow attorney? We all know that the ethical rules require us to report another attorney’s unethical behavior. How many of us do that, though? How many times do we turn a blind eye to some questionable action, with an eye to quid pro quo? Being a lawyer is tough and sometimes we get overzealous and cross a line here and there, but we’ve all come across egregious actions and have let them pass.

Are we any better than Cam’ron?

There are two polls on this: One below on whether you would report a violation of an ethical rule and one in the “polls” sidebar section on whether you’d represent a snitch.

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Technorati Tags: snitching, anderson cooper