how do lawyers defend someone they know is guilty?

Question

i never could understand how a lawyer even if he know his clinet is gulity (with 20 people claiming abuse or something, eveidence) can still defend them, and try to keep them from being imprisoned, how can a sane person with such a high degree keep amurderer out of jail just so they would make moey. Someone please explain

Answer 1

Lawyers have no ethics. my father was a lawyer. He never took any case where injustice was involved and he never made any money. But I see even petty lawyers make large amount of money by doing all kind of illegal things. Even judges are involved.

If you ask them they say it was their duty to defend a client and not to decide whether they are innocent or culprit. that has to be decided by the court.

Answer 2

Those saying defense attorneys do it for the money have never been around too many defense attorneys. Think about it. How many people charged with crime have very much money to pay a privately retained attorney?? Not many. Many defense attorneys work for indigent clients and are paid for by the State. This includes public defenders. Remember, everyone in the US is entitled to an attorney. It is a protection guaranteed by the Constitution. And remember that part about, if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you??

A criminal defense attorney's job is to vigorously defend their client and protect his/her Constitutional rights throughout the process. Whether a person is guilty or not, the justice system requires that the prosecution follow certain rules of the game in order to obtain a conviction. It is the defense attorney who makes sure this happens. (Remember the Duke lacrosse case? If not for the diligent work of defense attorneys, the outcome could have been far different.)

Answer 3

First off money is NOT the answer. Most criminal defense attorneys are public defenders who are the lowest paid of all attys with the possible exception of legal aid. (around $30K/yr.

Defense attorneys believe that ever person deservers a fair trial. In order for the innocent to get a fair trial it demands that the guilty get a fair trial as well.

Not withstanding cases such as OJ, it is rare that the truly guilty go free.

It is considerably more likely that someone who is not guilty will be convicted that someone who is guilty will go free. Yet nobody challenges the ethics of prosecutors. What happened in the Duke rape case was more severe than typical but prosecutors routinely over charge, file charges on very questionable evidence and withhold exculpatory evidence.

And if you blame OJ’s defense attorneys for the mis-justice, I respectfully disagree and say the fault lies with the LA police. If they had done their job properly the defense would not have been able to get a not-guilty verdict, it was police misconduct that caused the not-guilty. The defense did their job, the police did not do theirs.

As I am considering becoming a public defender and as this is an issue every PD faces I have discussed this with many defense attorneys.

They all hate it when someone they know committed a serious crime gets off free, one who has been a PD for 20 yours said most of the time he is very mad at the prosecutor and the police, because he knows what errors they made and that had they done their job the monster would be going to jail.

But this is a very rare situation for many reasons. Most of the time the guilty - plead guilty. And the defense attys job is sentence negotiations. I don’t know any defense attorney who feels bad that he was able to negotiate a plea so a drug addict got treatment instead of jail.

I spoke with one PD of 6 years she told me she almost quit being a defense attorney over one case. Four years, in she defended a rapist who had raped three children. She knew her client was guilty, there was DNA evidence she excluded because the police violated three different criminal procedure laws each one enough to exclude the evidence. The victims were all in their own rights compulsive liars the jury did not believe them and the defendant walked.

After the jury returned their verdict she went into the bathroom and puked. She had never felt bad about getting someone off before that. Many of her clients that she had gotten not guilty were in her mind in fact not guilty. And she gotten a few not guilty’s on possession of drugs that she knew the defendants were guilty, but she doesn’t believe in our drug laws so that never bothered her. She had defended a female college student on a public urination charge in which the defendant admitted to her she had in fact committed the crime, but got it dropped for insufficient evidence -- she did not feel bad about that.

But eventually what allowed her to continue doing her job was she had defended many wrongfully accused and felt good about that. Although one case sickens her to her stomach, it had only happened once out of the thousands of clients she represented in four years, actually 6 years. Nobody has a perfect job.

Defense attorneys do not like it when bad people go free, but defending them is the only way to insure we get to keep our constitutional rights.

Answer 4

One of the fundamental principles of the American legal system is a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Another is that everyone is entitled to council. While I generally agree with you, I think they are guided by those two principles. Furthermore, while a person may but guilty of the act they are accused of, there is often a question of whether they are guild of the crime they are charged with and whether there is enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is guilty.

Lastly, a good defense attorney will know when to advise his client to take a deal and when to go to trial.

As people have said to me in the past, it's better to think of our judicial system as a 'legal system' rather than a 'justice system'.

Answer 5

Their job isn't to determine if someone is guilty (even if it is obvious.)

They're are paid/appointed to defend their client to the point of exhaustion, regardless of given evidence.

Simplified: Lawyers have flexible morals and are only allowed to operate in society because they are considered necessary by the money-making world of law.

Answer 6

Their job is not to free the defendant. Their job is to ensure their client's rights are not violated. Prisons are full of people who had lawyers.

Answer 7

You basically answered your own question! sometime they get punked to take the case by their law firm and other times they take it because the lawyers who arent morally bankrupt wont take the case.

Answer 8

nothing personal, its a living you gotta do what you gotta do.
(i'm not a lawyer) why does bush lie to his people? same reason, if he told the truth he'd be out of office and out of a job.............................................

Answer 9

It's all about the money...I couldn't do it, but I think that's the main...and maybe the only reason why they do it.

Answer 10

yes, quite hard to understand! I could never do that