If you were a defence attorney and you knew your client was guilty of the murder charge against your client.

Stipulations:

Your client is not retarded or legally insane.

He's is a just a middle income blue collar worker.

There is no questioning his guilt to you. You have seen evidence the prosecutors do know know about wich will prove without a doubt he is the murderer, and he has admitted to you he did it, but he wants you to get him off.


Would you defend him?

Ethical dilemma: You could face a disbar if you refuse to represent him...

I see no ethical problem with giving him a good legal defense, since the adversarial process is what our criminal justice system is based on, and there's nothing at all unethical about making the prosecution prove their case. However, that does not mean telling lies or doing anything else unethical "to get him off," such as spinning bogus theories which I know to be false. If he demands that, he needs a different attorney and I'll drop the case.

Yes but if you do your job well and he gets off, you have just let a murderer go free, possible for him to kill again.

That's an understood possibility when becoming a defense attorney. Now, if your court appointed, I don't think you have much of a choice, but to represent the accused.

Most likely, if you are good enough to get him off, he can't afford to pay you and you can refuse him on that basis.

Edited to add this link to fuel the debate.

A lawyer's obligation when client is guilty

As Billy Jean said, if I'm not prepared to deal with the possibility that someone I know is guilty will go free as the result of my work, then I shouldn't be a defense attorney. And the converse situation will happen too: Someone I know is innocent will be convicted, and I'd feel as bad, or maybe worse, about that.

I agree with O'Reilly's ethics complaint, from Eeyore's link.

Putting myself into the hypothetical situation, I would try any trick in the book to defend the guilty. That's my job.

However, if the trick isn't in the book, forget it. That's my job, too.

Now if this was first degree murder and the prosecution has the goods on the murderer, then my tricks won't work, right? But if the prosecution doesn't have the evidence or flubs the case, then whose ethics are faulty? Is it unethical to try to frame somebody? Yep.

But is it unethical to be incompetent?

That's a fuzzy area, IMO.

Anyway, trying to get out of the case may be a practical solution, but it really doesn't address the underlying ethical question. Also, denying the hypothetical situation entirely avoids facing the dilemma.

What if this was second or third degree murder? Should I be able to get the murderer off, does that mean he or she will murder again?

Not necessarily. There was no planning going on with second and third degree murder.

And this extends to another ethical question: Is it right to send an otherwise law abiding citizen to the university of real bad *** NOTICE: THIS WORD IS AGAINST THE RULES. FAILURE TO REMOVE IT WILL RESULT IN A STRIKE. *** murderers, to be graduated as a bona fide and nearly guaranteed danger to society?

This may also play in the first degree murder situation. What you'll end up with is someone well trained to murder again.

Then that cascades to questions about life terms and capital punishment.

This is a good exercise and involves real issues about our criminal law system.

My question is - how can I KNOW that my client is guilty?

If they confess, that doesn't prove anything; people have made false confessions before.

If the crime was surrounded by witnesses, that doesn't prove anything; witnesses can be and often are mistaken.

If the crime was captured on video (or similar), that doesn't prove anything on it's own either - video can be doctored, and the more serious the offence, the more tempting it is to doctor evidence to make SOMEONE pay. (Plenty of precedents exist here in the UK from manhunts for IRA bombers and the like - our death penalty was abolished partly because an innocent man was hanged for murdering his wife when it turned out that John Christie had done the deed.)

No, I think the only way I, as a defence attorney, could KNOW (or think I know) that my client was guilty, rather than just strongly suspect it, is if I myself was a witness to the crime, in which case my duty would be to put myself forward as a witness, not as a lawyer.

If the weight of evidence looked overwhelming, my duty would be to try to get the best deal by avoiding trial and plea bargaining if I could (something which doesn't happen in the UK, although there are proposals to bring it in).