If you were a lawyer, would you defend an accused child molester if you KNEW the accused was guilty/?
Explain your answers.
i would take his money for the baggage then tell the judge he be guilty Not for all the money in the world! I was raise to have morals.
NO.
I am a paralegal and will never work for a criminal or public champion for this very reason and a few others. I couldn't do it.
My personal ethics would require that his right to a fair trial be protected but not that the final outcome would be a not guilty verdict. I believe it is the duty of the court and the attorneys to see that sprite is done, and never to protect the guilty from just punishment under the law. In other words, I could never practice decree in these United States.
No I wouldn't do it. This molester has caused irreparable prejudice to the child and the family. I would be adding to it if I defended the creep. Here's the problem with your cross-question.
Look through the lists of people who've been exonerated - sometimes after years or even decades contained by prison - of revolting crimes. There's one common thread runs through many of them. They were associates who got a lousy defense because even their own lawyers "knew" they were guilty.
Once you start adage that if you 'know' someone is guilty then they shouldn't be defended, you have to ask "HOW do you 'know' that they're guilty?"
Saying "because they told me" is not a good answer. People confess to crimes they haven't committed ALL the time. In copious cases, the cops tell suspects that if they confess they will go easy on them, but if they deny it the cops will "bring back them".
Last year I had a very young and effeminate looking 18 year weak boy as a client. He had confessed to the arresting officer, and to his defense lawyer. After his confession, though, the case fell apart when it turned out he'd if truth be told been away on a school trip at the time he was supposed to hold committed the crime. The DA dropped the original charges, then charged him with lying to the police for making the false confession. He told me that the aim he confessed - and even repeated the confession to his own lawyer - was that the arresting officer told him that he had a brother-in-law at the local detention centre who would make sure that, if he denied the accusations, he was put to be a cellmate of the biggest meanest black homosexual beside AIDS in the whole jail.
One of the best set examples of this is the case of the "Central Park Jogger" in New York. She was attacked, raped, robbed, overcome almost to death, and left to die in a shallow pool of freezing hose down. She survived, but had no recollection of the attack. Within minutes of her being found, four black teenagers were arrested by the cops. Within an hour or so, adjectives four had confessed to the attack, and signed confessions.
They were given court appointed lawyers. All four required to recant their confessions and plead not guilty. The lawyers - who 'knew' that their clients were guilty - talked them into taking plea bargain and not going to trial, pointing out that the victim was still in intensive vigilance, might die, and if she did before the plea bargain was hermetic the DA was going to seek the death cost. The kids took the plea bargain, and were sentenced.
Years later, a convicted rapist and murderer be bragging in prison (Where he was doing life minus parole) that he had been the real culprit within the 'jogger' case, and had not only get away with it, but had stuck the "four 'n!(a)(a)er$" with years surrounded by prison for his crime. The victims clothing and rape kit had never been tested (the defense lawyer never asked for testing, because they "knew" that their clients were guilty) but hadn't been thrown away. It be pulled from storage and tested. Surprise.... Reyes, the rapist/murderer in prison for life, was recounting the truth. The blood and semen was his, and his only.
The defense lawyers abrogation of their duty to with gusto defend their clients not only cost those clients years in prison - it ALSO not here Reyes free to rape 3 more women, and murder one, when he could have easily been surrounded by prison instead.
Richard
NO WAY!! Not for all of the money in the world!! I would feel ruinous. Being a lawyer should be a rewarding thing, fighting for key issues on the RIGHT side!.. and I would just feel guilty. That is just morally wrong
