Eben has spoken very highly of criminal defense several times in class. I am one of those people who still doesn’t know what kind of law he wants to practice, but criminal law is definitely one of the possibilities. I find it interesting, at least academically/abstractly, and I think I would enjoy being the guy in someone’s corner.

The problem is, as much as I would love to be the person defending the wrongfully accused, I think I would be uncomfortable defending someone I believed had committed the crime. This would be more or less true depending on the circumstances, but for some crimes in particular (gratuitously violent crimes, sexual crimes against women and children, white collar crime/public integrity/fraud), I think I would have a real problem.

I realize this is somewhat naive. Being a lawyer means playing a discrete role in a justice system, not being judge and jury every time someone comes into your office with a case. And in a just system, even the vilest offender ought to have a zealous advocate. If you can represent someone so well that the system cannot convict him, then that person ought not be punished.

This is all well and good in theory. But the reality for me is, if you’re a child molester, I don't want to be the one who sets you loose again.

I’d be interested in getting some different perspectives on this.

-- DanKarmel - 20 Apr 2010

As a quick follow up, my purpose was in no way intended to overlook the injustices against those who are wrongfully convicted or to weigh one type of injustice against the other. I'm just asking, from the perspective of this narrow situation, how you resolve the moral dilemma.

-- DanKarmel - 20 Apr 2010

@Dan - I did criminal defense work before coming to law school. Granted, I wasn't a lawyer, but I came in having the same qualms. It was one of the first things that I brought up with the lawyers that I worked with. There was one lawyer that was particularly passionate about exactly this. He gave me his top two reasons that he didn't have moral issues with the work that he did:

(1) Everyone has the right to a lawyer. And not just a lawyer, but someone that will vigorously defend them. His job was to be this lawyer. Someone had to do this, and he was that person.

To connect this to our class, Eben has given us the example of the people in trouble who need a "good lawyer". This is especially the case in criminal defense cases. People are in vulnerable states, and these lawyers step in and give them a voice when theirs is particularly weak.

(2) In addition to protecting his one client, his job was upholding the constitution. His work was to ensure that the constitutional rights of his clients weren't violated - so while he was fighting for his clients, he was also fighting to protect constitutional rights.

His argument was that he'd rather see 100 child molesters walk free than to see one of our fundamental constitutional rights (for example, 4th Amendment rights) be taken away. His work was two tiered - he was assisting his individual clients (who were certainly in need of help) and he was assisting all Americans at the same time. Prosecutors protected us in one way (by working to lock away criminals, in the most general sense) and he protected us in another (by making sure the government didn't go to far). This really resonated with me.

I still struggled with a lot of the work. But having a different perspective helped me quite a bit.

-- DavidGoldin 20 Apr 2010

Dan, these are very valid concerns. I think it's important to note, however, that similar moral issues arise on the other side of the aisle. I can't imagine being a prosecutor, and having to live with the possibility that I successfully prosecuted an innocent man. That being said, you're more likely to defend a guilty defendant than you are to incarcerate an innocent one- but the lower probability doesn't make me feel any more comfortable with the problem. I think the larger question raised in your post is the difficulty of engaging in a profession where your work has grave consequences for individual liberty.-- AlisonMoe - 20 Apr 2010

Dan, I'm glad you've raised this talk topic. It's something that I've had to think about as well recently, because I'm working this summer in capital appeals, and will be doing a community defense externship in the fall. I think, first, my main drive towards criminal defense comes from what David raised as the first point the lawyer he worked with raised: I believe that everyone has the right to a good lawyer who will vigorously defend him or her. When someone cannot afford quality defense, they are deprived of rights, and potentially end up with a greater risk of conviction and incarceration. For someone's liberty (and even life) to hang in the balance of such chances of circumstance, to me, is insupportable. Further, I think that for many people, the circumstances that have led them to crime in the first place (ie their economic situation, upbringing, unfortunate family situation) are such a roll of the dice that it seems inherently unfair that these same circumstances may lead to a lower quality defense and higher risk of punishment. I think some of my sense of the injustice of this system and desire to provide defense comes from an innate distaste for punishment and our societal justification thereof, but the argument that all people deserve an equal shot at justice applies with or without such a viewpoint.

This also brings me to another point: sometimes, punishment is justified as some kind of societal "payback" - not just just desert for a moral wrong, but some kind of re-paying of a debt that one has incurred by taking some unfair benefit from society by refusing to follow the rules. I feel that in many cases, a person who has been downtrodden and given nothing by society is not in any position where he or she "owes" anything - what kind of payback is punishment, for a person to whom "society" has given nothing? In defending, then, I think it's possible to give a second chance, through zealous advocacy, to people who have never meaningfully been given a first chance.

This brings me (finally) to the question you originally posed, Dan: how do we resolve a moral dilemma of defending those whose actions we may condemn? I guess I just don’t see it as a dilemma. I think that it’s possible to simultaneously view certain behaviors as immoral or abhorrent or socially undesirable, but meanwhile believe that the right to good defense applies to everyone, even those whose acts we do not agree with. My interviewer for my summer job asked me how I would react if someone said [about advocating on the behalf of death row inmates] ‘how could you defend someone like that? Don’t you think what they did was wrong?’ I think it’s possible to believe that someone did something wrong, but also fully and emphatically believe that everyone deserves an equal shot at justice, and that no one deserves to be murdered by the state.

This aspect of equality is also important, and I could probably go on, but I think I’m starting to ramble. In sum, I agree that it can be hard to reconcile a drive for equal defense with an innate sense of distaste for wrongdoing, but feel that equal justice requires equal access to good advocacy, and as such defending those who most need it is a noble and necessary endeavor.

-- JessicaHallett - 20 Apr 2010

PS - To address your point, Alison, I think I'd argue that the problem isn't so much one of prosecuting an innocent man/defending a guilty one (ie a problem of somehow taking the "wrong" side) but one of making sure everyone has an equal chance to be represented well. I'm not sure if I can articulate this distinction particularly well, but I think to look at it from a neutral basis, it's a matter of providing advocacy to everyone, and not about making sure the outcomes are "correct" or morally accurate from some subjective baseline.

-- JessicaHallett - 20 Apr 2010