14 upvotes, 0 direct replies (showing 0)
View submission: The Ethics of Defense Lawyers
The author clearly went into the debate pre-convinced that defense lawyers are evil. This was blatantly obvious when they acknowledged that the research shows most lawyers are trying to uphold the law but then choose to reject that evidence and start haranguing a French lawyer.
The position of the author seems to be that it is immoral to try and help a person escape justice. What they don't get is that the entire purpose of defense lawyers is to sort out what the just act is.
Like many lay people who have strong religious convictions or pro-authority beliefs, the author takes the niave, and dangerous, position that the police are the ones who determine who is and isn't guilty of a crime. In our system though, the police just gather evidence so that a jury can decide who is guilty.
The author makes the same error of judgement that many outsiders to the criminal justice system make. They assume that investigating crime is easy and we rarely have any doubt over the truth. In reality, investigations are hard and most of the time we do need to question what we think is true.
This line of thinking is one of ther major gripes I have about religious people. Religion cultivates the idea that truth is clear and readily accessible. So when a situation gets confusion there is a tendency to try top cut through that gordian knot by simply declaring something true and refusing to consider alternatives.
Additionally, the author also fails to point out that in the vast majority of criminal cases in America the defense lawyer doesn't argue that the defendant is innocent. They instead assist thre defendant in preparing a plea bargain. So they help someone who made a mistake come to terms with the result of that mistake and find a way to move forward. To deny them this because we have a moral objection to helping bad guys would be unconscionable.
There's nothing here!