Quote:
Originally Posted by Sainters7
Yeah that's brutal what the defence is seeking. It takes a very special person to be a defense attorney. A very $$$ > morality type personality. How someone can defend people like that for a living and still get a good night's sleep is something I'll never understand.
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Ok, I'll bite...
Criminal defence lawyers are statistically among the lowest paid and hardest working members of the profession, who by the very nature of the people and subject matter they deal with, necessarily operate with the highest regard for ethics.
Your righteous indignation betrays your superficial understanding of what it means to have a justice system as typically defined in an advanced constitutional democracy.
You see, to avoid the appalling injustices of rule by lynch mob or totalitarian decree, one must accept that an integral part of a system that seeks (and sometimes even provides) truly just outcomes is to ensure that a person who the government declares through its armed officers should be imprisoned has his or her rights protected in a fair and impartial hearing.
In that sense, I defend people charged with heinous crimes so that you and the rest of society can sleep at night unencumbered by worry that innocent people are languishing away in prison falsely punished on your behalf for things they did not do.
Defence lawyers have families, just like you. Walk the same streets as you. Are victims of crime just like you. We suffer through horrific images and evidence no more no less than do police, judges, prosecutors, and jurors.
Your employ of 'morality' as a measure of what defence lawyers must lack in order to defend "people like that" misses completely that it is society's very application of morality which gives the defence lawyer his mandate.
It is precisely because I serve the morality of a society governed by the rule of law that I not only defend "people like that" but do so with pride, a true sense of purpose, and I sleep just fine.
I will certainly agree with you it takes special people to be good criminal defence counsel. But not because they reap fame and fortune through corruption of their morals. Rather, because we ignore the angry mob mentality, the threats, the sneers and the jokes and we fearlessly make arguments on behalf of those who have often times no other hope and to whom it would be all too easy for us to act unjustly.
Parenthetically, on occasion, we even have the privilege and simultaneous terrifying burden of representing factually innocent people. Wrongfully accused. They are a real thing.
Eloquence and wit aside, boiled down to its essence - it's an incredibly tough job at times - but somebody's gotta do it. And it is fairly clear you will not be answering the call. So...you're welcome.