Confessions of a Criminal Lawyer

When I talk to people about my former career as a criminal defense lawyer I am often asked if I ever had to represent someone who I knew was guilty. I tell them that I never had the luxury of representing anyone who wasn't. Without the need to advance my career or the profession in general, or even the need to bolster the presumption of innocence that is the hallmark of American jurisprudence, I can honestly say that those who are arrested are usually guilty. The negotiation and bargaining that occurs between prosecutors and defenders is more a function of degree, the formal charges and the splitting of hairs that can mean the difference between years spent in prison, probation or a death sentence, but those charged are usually guilty of harming others, of terribly selfish and criminal disregard for the rules that keep our society functioning peacefully.

Yes, I've sold out my clients, I've made sure rapists went to jail, and murderers were put away, I coached my drug dealing clients right into the lockup, and into rehab programs, when they might have walked free with a timely legal motion. And somehow I feel that I was serving their interests as well as societies. I never encouraged a client to confess, or to tell the truth, I never pressed them for their story, I always found it a little embarrassing for myself and for them, watching them squirm and dodge while they were making up their lies. I refused to put them on the spot or coach them into a more believable version of the truth. I would simply change the subject and discuss the evidence against them, talk about the view of the truth as supported by the facts. I would compel them to see how this all seems to the authorities, and how whether wrong or right, this is what we face. I never once had a client, forcefully expound a believable alternative to the evidence being proffered. It is my belief that the vast majority of criminal attorneys out there are very akin to their clients, they revel in their lies and fabrications and are so very proud of their trickery.

I never took much money from my criminal clients, I suppose it was out of guilt that I refused to push for payment, somehow I knew that If they realized my objective, they wouldn't care for my methods. My objective was to do the best thing for them as a person. Sometimes that meant going to jail, for a long, long time, sometime that meant coming clean and asking the court for direction and restriction. The road to redemption is not in beating the system on a technicality.

How many times have I heard "If I only had a better lawyer I could have been innocent" and they believe that it's the failure of the lawyer when justice is served. Criminal behavior is a mental illness. It is a defect of reasoning a defect of compassion and connectedness, it's a mental defect born of alienation. That being said we still need to get these people off of the street. If jail won't reform them, certainly letting them loose won't either. I have seen several young men get out of jail with the firm resolve that they will never go back. They do leave jail with a more sober realization of the way the world works. Jails are not perfect but many do not want to return once they've had the experience, I've had clients that only changed because they went away. I would not deny my clients such a rich and rewarding experience.