Innocence Faded

Over at Crime & Federalism, Norm takes a crack at answering a question that lots of non-lawyers have of criminal defense attorneys: Does Innocence Matter? More specifically, does it matter to an attorney if his client tells him he's innocent? Norm argues that it doesn't, because it doesn't really have a bearing on his job of testing the prosecution's case and seeing whether the charges can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As to trials, Norm writes:

No one is redeemed at trial. Nothing is made right in a criminal case. The murdered victim remains dead; the violated child still shrieks in shame and rage. Criminal law is not about healing. It is all a simple matter of proof.

That's true, and as Norm further points out, no attorney can ever really know if his client is guilty or innocent. It always comes down to trusting the evidence and whether you can trust your client to be honest with you. Since so many criminal defendants are, to put it politely, unreliable narrators, it may be a fool's errand to try and sort it all out given its irrelevance to the judicial process.