What is our job?
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The Windypundit, in an effort to get a fellow Chicago blogger blawging, asks indirectly whether our job is to protect people’s rights or to help criminals “get away with it”:
Most criminal lawyers get asked that last question all the time, so I figured it was an easy one, but Rob took issue with my first question:
I can’t help anyone “get away with murder.” No lawyer can, unless they actually break the law. No, what I do is I defend your rights, and I make sure that the other side doesn’t cheat. That’s not the same as helping you get away with murder.
It is to me, if I’m a murderer.
I don’t think Rob means what he wrote (at least not the way I’m taking it) especially that part about having to break the law to help a client get away with a crime. Or else criminal defense lawyers don’t do what I’ve always thought they do, because I’m pretty sure that if I’m charged with a crime, it’s my lawyer’s job to try to stop the state from convicting me even if I did it.
Pretty much every defense attorney has been asked that question and most of us have fine-tuned our stock responses. They’re variations of the same “I’m defending the Constitution, asshole” meme. But is that what it really is? Losses sting in our business. We see clients sent to jail for decades and we never forget those cases. So wins do mean something. Is “I’m defending the Constitution” merely the sugar-coating on “helping them get away with it”?
Because that’s essentially what we do. We don’t step aside once all the illegal evidence has been suppressed. If a prosecutor does everything by the book, we don’t put up our arms and say “well, you got us. He’s guilty; take him away”. Of course not.
We fight. We fight tooth and nail. Not because we absolutely believe that our client is innocent - in fact, most of the time we don’t care whether the client is guilty or not.
We use phrases like “make the State prove its case” and “the burden of proof is on them and if we don’t make them meet it, the slope will start slipping”.
So for a while there, I was almost convinced that yes, we do help them “get away with it”. But then I remembered that 96% of cases don’t go to trial. The ones that do have serious questions about the guilt of the defendant. It is in those cases that the cliches apply. In the rest of the cases, we plea bargain. And that’s where we don’t “help them get away with it”, but we help them put their best foot forward by acting as their representative in a world that sees them as the same as the next guy and another statistic to sentence and forget.
Every case is different and every defendant is different. What might be a just sentence for one is not for another. That’s our job. To help our clients gain a foothold in a world that has long since abandoned them and forgotten them. A world that tries so hard to homogenize them. A world that wants to paint them with the same broad brush-strokes. It is us, the criminal defense lawyers, that stand up to the world and say: “This is a man, with his own life, his own experiences and his own achievements”. He is not the same as the next man, just as the next man is not the same as him.
So, for the most part, our job is not helping them “get away with it”, but rather reminding the rest of the world that they are not cattle. We fight for that which is right and appropriate. We fight against indiscrimination and prejudice and stereotypes. In that sense, we fight for us all, because we are all unique and special in our own ways. We don’t forget that and neither should you.
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You guys do a job. You provide representation to those accused of crimes. If you are happy when some guy who did it (and I am talking about a malum in se crime) gets off, then people have the right to hate you for it. It’s that simple. I don’t understand why you guys think you should be immune from dislike or disapproval. If I heard some defense attorney exulting over getting some guy off who did it, I’d think him some moral leper, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
Here’s a good analogy. A vet. We’d all think a vet pretty weird who actually enjoyed euthanizing animals. So when you guys get all happy about getting some guy off (as opposed to just doing your job), then you’re like the vet who enjoys putting down animals.
Hey there, this is the Rob from windypundit’s link. Windypundit recently asked the Chicago blawgosphere to pipe up, and after a brief hiatus, I’ve redidicated myself to blogging and have gotten into it with him. In a good way, I assure you, and his prompting is appreciated.
You’re absolutely right about our role. It’s not about “helping them get away with it” it’s about making sure that the process runs as fair as possible. And to that end, you fight like a lion for your client, even if you know that they “did it.” Which you don’t! You don’t know anything more than that prosecutor does. You are simply arguing a set of facts and any reasonable inferences or arguments that can be made out of those facts.
Also, it’s not a question of someone “getting away with it” it’s a question of the State not putting together a strong enough case. The obvious analogy recently here in Chicago was the R. Kelly case. I predicted on my blog an acquittal for the simple reason that the victim wasn’t going to testify. And the exit interviews with jurors confirmed this to a T. They weren’t doubting that it was R. Kelly in the video, they just didn’t feel the State had sealed, beyond a reasonable doubt, who the victim was.
R. Kelly’s lawyers didn’t help him get away with statutory rape and child pornography. The State was unable to prove their case. The defense was just there to remind the jurors what their role was, the State that is. And that’s the part of being a defense lawyer people forget a lot. If we weren’t around, pointing the finger right back at the State and raising their burden up, people would convict defendants based on racial prejudice, fear, personal revulsion, or whatever other factors, besides rationality, that they felt like.
By the way, I’m going to have steal bunch of your links…holy christ do you have a blogroll!
Windy is a good blogger. I’m glad he got you to add your voice to the ’sphere.
Feel free to raid the blogroll - that’s what it’s there for!
I don’t know how I feel about this one. Call me a moral leper, but I really don’t care if my guys did it or not. I care about winning!!! I don’t go home and celebrate when I loose a case but won all my motions. I don’t high five my buddy at the office when I loose a suppression motion.
I do this job because I don’t want to chase down clients for retainers and I like to win. I would not feel comfortable ever working for the other side. Maybe thats why I chose to practice in a state where I have no family or friends, I am detached from everyone involved in the cases and they are nothing more than law school hypotheticals and mock trials to me.
I don’t live in the part of town where most of my clients live or where they are arrested. Each day I get to drive myself into my secluded neighborhood where “those” kind of people don’t dare to enter because they would be profiled and stopped before they crossed the tracks.
Hypocrisy is a luxury we have as attorneys because we are obliged to defend our CLIENT’S best interest without judgment or prejudice. At least thats how I sleep comfortably at night.
You defend the sometimes guilty to the best of your ability to keep the power of the state from crushing the innocent. From a distance, it’s not that complicated.