Where Is Your World?

"Popular culture has always loved the criminal defense attorney, usually characterizing them as threadbare but plucky defenders of accused innocents. In contrast, prosecutors have long been depicted as overzealous, politically ambitious, and hell-bent on framing some poor marginalized defendant."

Thus begins a column from Findlaw yesterday by Joshua Marquis, a former prosecutor in Oregon. Please, can I come live in your world? In my world, criminal defense attorneys are about the lowest form of life on the legal food chain. Yes, my friends and family are proud of what I do (I hope), but in the back of every mind of every person I meet is that burning question: "How can you represent someone who X," where X equals any number of nasty things.

In my experience, it's the prosecutors who jurors believe completely and who judges rule in favor of 95% of the time. I've read transcript after transcript where the state's case was flimsy, to say the least, but jurors followed merrily along, not willing to believe the "plucky" defenders. By the way, the last word I would use to describe my colleagues is "plucky."

I don't condone some of the tricks the defense attorneys Marquis mentions in his piece. However, the fact that the defense attorneys are jackasses is no reason for the prosecutors to be as well. What happened to rising above the fray? Dignity before self aggrandizement? Can Marquis not see that treating a major rape trial as a source of jokes is bad stuff for either side? Most prosecutors are fundamentally good people and try and be just, but some recklessly pursue convictions at the expense of what's right. Likewise, most defense attorneys are good people trying to find justice for their client, but some will unscrupulously do anything for an acquittal. The excesses of either side should not be tolerated and certainly shouldn't be used to justify another's unethical behavior.