Quote:
Originally Posted by Frequitude
To MBates and other defense lawyers,
Could you shed some light on lower sentences for convicted murderers? Why are they right and how do you justify trying for those when the client is in fact a murderer?
A lot of the talk defending defense lawyers in this thread has centered around the two extremes (ensuring a clearly guilty person who got the max punishment is given a fair unappealable trial like Garland, and ensuring an innocent person doesn't get convicted like Milgaard). However my speculation is that the animosity from some in this thread is coming from those who had someone close to them murdered where the accused got off with a perceived light punishment (e.g. the referenced 5 years).
|
None of this has anything to do with the defense lawyer, it is the system we have, you can argue that everyone convicted should get the same sentence but that's a political question, its no more the defenses fault we allow judges to lighten sentences than it is that we don't hang people anymore.
The defense has the job of doing everything they can to represent (not just defend) their client, that's the system we have, everyone in it works on the assumption that a) it works and b) if it doesn't work its parliament's job to fix it, not cops beating people up before hand because 'they get off too light' or crown hiding evidence or the defence doing a ####e job because 'I think he's guilty' or prison guards leaving the guy in the courtyard to be beaten to death.
I might not care that much if some of it happens but I sure as sugar don't want that being approved off either because its not just murder, what if your defense lawyer thinks your excuse for being pulled over having had one to many is lousy and you should actually go to jail for 6 months even though the breathalyser was off and you hadn't had a drink.
We have had several cases in the last few years where the laboratories/medical examiner testing DNA evidence essentially took it upon themselves to fix the evidence to convict in rape and murder charges, either due to incompetence or outright mendacity, realistically letting lawyers argue for the previous good character of their client as a mitigating circumstance is a form of insurance for false convictions as much as anything else.
I'm struggling desperately to remember the name of the farmer in Saskatoon (?) who killed his daughter with cerebral palsy, clearly guilty, clearly murder but equally clearly a situation where a 'one size fits all' sentence didn't really apply.