4 Responses to “Psst… your lawyer may not like you”

1. Anonymous on June 4th, 2008 6:34 am

   You must be kidding. While it is certainly important that a lawyer do his or her best to defend a capital murder case, it makes no sense to require they believe in the client’s innocence. The reality is most are not and it would be foolish to think otherwise. Also do you really believe most capital defendants are likeable?? Its hard enoulgh to get good court appointed lawyers willing to do the job of defending these cases, now you want to requirethem to like the defendant. Staying detached and out of the world of make believe gives the defendant the best chance.

2. Publicus on June 4th, 2008 6:45 am

   Your comment seems confusing. I’m not interested enough in the background story to read the Time piece so I’ll work with just what you provide. Time’s objection, as you report it, is to the “procedural bar” (see below) rationale of the Georgia opinion. But having identified that as the issue, you never address it. Instead, you go off on a semi-rant about defense lawyers not having to believe their clients, or like them. It’s not clear, at least from your version of the events, who ever argued that they should. Time’s point, as you describe it, was that the defendant was entitled to a decision on the merits (of his “ineffective assistance” claim I take it). Your reply does not address this point.

   There is an interesting issue implicit in your comment, of whether there is a relationship dimension to the ineffective assistance doctrine (i.e., does effective assistance require that lawyers get along with clients and take direction from them), and discussing this issue would let you relate the point you seem driven to make to the Time story. But, perhaps surprisingly, you don’t mention this issue either. The Supreme Court pretty much resolved it (in favor of your view), in Jones v. Barnes, and it has held fast to that resolution during the course of several ineffective assistance cases over the past dozen years, but I take it that blog commentary doesn’t discuss law.

   Maybe it would help to write an outlne of your commentary before putting it in final form. That way you could check the logic of the argument. Logical connections (or the lack thereof), are often easier to see in outline form.

   [As an aside, I can’t tell if you use “procedural bar” to mean “time-barred,” that is, outside the relevant statute of limitations, or whether there was some other procedural rule in the case that was not complied with. Whether “procedural bar” is a carefully chosen word of art, in other words, or as just an imprecise, generic, catch-all term when you’r not sure of the specific issue in question, is not clear. Given the rest ot the comment, I suspect that the latter is the case, but it does not matter. Resolving that question is not necessary to saying what’s confusing about your comment.]

3. Publicus on June 4th, 2008 8:26 am

   Anonymous - Grzincic agrees with you. Why do you say she “must be kidding”?

4. Bruce on June 4th, 2008 11:52 am

   Implicit in this discussion is the idea that the state is both a legitimate monopolist on force and an acceptable judge and punisher of offenses between people. Someone who had doubts about state power, but still thought his client deserved death, could easily reconcile both a procedural defense of a purported murder AND oppose her execution if found guilty.

   While it is hardly a shocking concept - that the government uses force and punishes crimes - it is implicitly stated more than explicitly. We often forget that a criminal prosecution is GOVERNMENT versus defendant, focusing on the sometimes shocking alleged facts surrounding the latter rather than on the constant capacity for predation, tyranny and injustice by agents of the former.

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