On Law and Justice

In most discussions about my hopeful future career as a blood sucking vampire conniving weasel attorney, I run across people saying how hard of a time they’d have being (choose one) a defense attorney or a prosecutor. Most choose the defense attorney because, geez, how can you try to keep those dirty criminals out in society. Occasionally some poor soul will say they’d feel bad about locking up innocents. To me, this isn’t a big deal. It’s not, as some may suspect, because I have no heart or that I’m some kind of conscienceless bastard, rather it’s just a matter of faith in the justice system. Which, to most, sounds like an oxymoron.

The first thing it’s important to understand is that mistakes can, will, and do happen. You can do your best but we’re all only human, and there are any number of things that can “go wrong” to produce the incorrect outcome in a criminal case. Once you admit that those things will happen, you can begin to move on to the meat of the argument. But I’m not talking about complacency here, we shouldn’t be satisfied that MOST of the people got a fair shake… no matter how hard we try, perfection will never be achieved… but that’s no reason not to strive for it anyhow.

Then you have the seeming paradox of verdict versus guilt. In any case there are a range of outcomes but no matter which side of the trial you’re on, it is your job to represent your client to the best of your ability. As a defense attorney, you have to defend that double-murdering pedophile bastard no matter how sure you are he did it. Why? Isn’t that an outrage!? I mean… you KNOW he did it… can’t you just let him twist in the wind? No. There are a lot of reasons for it, but the eventual answer is no, a lawyer cannot abandon his/her duty.

Why? Well, for starters you have The Primal Fear Effect… even the smartest of us can be fooled. Whether it’s a guilty person convincing you otherwise or someone confessing to save the real criminal… if it was that easy to differentiate between innocent and guilty we wouldn’t need courts… we’d just ask some old wise man on the street. Then there’s the real kicker… faith in the system. We have to believe that when all of the sides follow the rules and work to the best of their ability, the facts will come out and the correct decision will be made. In defending a guilty man, you have to give him the best defense possible, deep down being confident that the prosecutor has the facts (and therefore, in theory, the distinct advantage) in his or her favor.

So when it comes down to it, do I think I could put that much trust in a system? Yeah, I think I could.