Glad to see we have a lawyer putting out that the whole "you are PR," is goose shit. I also feel like it's worth pointing out; especially, with the observation of how we've legalized rape for wealthy men, it seems like the only sexually assault cases that get tons of attention in the public are those that either involve someone famous, with tons of influence or are highly heinous (usually serial, though I de recall the asshole football players from the one high school in Ohio getting the spotlight). So to me, it seems like most people that have to worry about court of pubic opinion can damn well afford a PR person if they need it that badly. As for the edge cases, well on reform we badly need is that the "but she was slut, her attire showed she was asking for it or she shouldn't have been drinking" defense need to die in a fire. If a lawyer resorts to character assassination they need to be disbarred. The public shouldn't put with shit like that from wealthy individuals. if someone is innocent, there shouldn't be a need to use character assassination to destroy someone's life. Hell, it seems like more often than not, those defenses are employed because even the accused knows they were told no or that they didn't ask and if they don't destroy the accusers reputation publicly, their rich boy ass probably will be in the slammer for one or more counts of sexual assault.
Also trying to google it, but maybe someone will have better luck. I'm genuinely curious if my observation is more or less on the money. That most sexual assault cases largely go unnoticed by the public. That's probably partly because this bullshit is too common because our society really does have an issue with legitimizing rape culture.
The most horrible thing was the life experience she brought to writing it. She knew, intimately, how women were treated in the court system and the public eye. She knew how accusers can be portrayed as crazy — “increasingly unglued,” was the phrase she used when detailing how they would frame Rose McGowan for the general public. Lisa Bloom knew everything that would happen to Weinstein’s victims if they executed her plan, and she wrote that memo anyway.
She has since apologized, calling her involvement a “colossal mistake.” She has vowed to make her law practice 100 percent victim-focused. She sounds truly sorry.
But while I was reading “She Said,” I couldn’t stop marveling over how much Bloom seemed to relish her role as Harvey Weinstein’s adviser. How heady all that power must have seemed. “As a women’s rights advocate, I have been blunt with Harvey and he has listened to me,” she proposed as one public statement. In the next sentence, she mentioned a movie project Weinstein was going to help her get made.
It’s funny how some women talk about “women’s rights,” when what they really mean is, “me.”
The most horrible thing was the life experience she brought to writing it. She knew, intimately, how women were treated in the court system and the public eye. She knew how accusers can be portrayed as crazy — “increasingly unglued,” was the phrase she used when detailing how they would frame Rose McGowan for the general public. Lisa Bloom knew everything that would happen to Weinstein’s victims if they executed her plan, and she wrote that memo anyway.
She has since apologized, calling her involvement a “colossal mistake.” She has vowed to make her law practice 100 percent victim-focused. She sounds truly sorry.
But while I was reading “She Said,” I couldn’t stop marveling over how much Bloom seemed to relish her role as Harvey Weinstein’s adviser. How heady all that power must have seemed. “As a women’s rights advocate, I have been blunt with Harvey and he has listened to me,” she proposed as one public statement. In the next sentence, she mentioned a movie project Weinstein was going to help her get made.
It’s funny how some women talk about “women’s rights,” when what they really mean is, “me.”
Yeah, she has proven her legal practice is already plenty victim focused.
I can't really imagine trusting someone like this to run my case, or really have any desire to sit in the same room with her if I was a victim of sexual assault. I rather hope this get enough attention so women know the kind of person they are dealing with before going to her for help.
Not to mention that every woman that Bloom did represented has every right to sue to find out if she wasn't actually working to get her abuser off the hook, starting with the Sheen victims.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
Used to do IT consulting for various law firms; one such firm had a lawyer that was defending a young woman who was charged with luring a little girl and then helping her boyfriend murder said little girl. We basically just had to turn off her email for almost the duration of the trial because people are kinda emotional and dumb and don't get that a lawyer representing someone doesn't mean they somehow support what they did.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
Innocent man spends 26 years in prison, man gets away with murder.
The lawyer than enabled this, knowingly, did the "right" thing.
Anyone who seriously argues this really needs to take a good look at themselves in the mirror.
+19
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't argue against attorney-client privilege, regardless of consequences. I do see that one as an absolute necessity for our legal system to work. Call it a necessary evil, I guess. It's not like lawyers are the only ones who get such a privilege - there's also marital privilege, priest-penitent privilege, and psychotherapist-patient privilege. All of which I consider necessary to the law, and none of which I want to see abolished in some mad dash for the truth at any cost.
Now, a lawyer lying on the stand on behalf of their client, or spreading a disinformation campaign despite knowing the truth from their client, I think those go above and beyond legal privilege and can obviously be called unethical.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
I'd say when someone can leave someone rot in prison for a crime for 26 years i think the priviledge kinda needs a rethink.
There should be some limits.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
Say you get into some sort of legal trouble—maybe criminal, maybe “just” your livelihood—and it’s the worst moment of your life.
You go to an attorney with the worst problem you’ve ever had. You put your life, maybe literally, in their hands.
In your scenario, your attorney can then decide it’s the “least harm,” to let your life get destroyed and your only recourse is to...hire another attorney, who may do the exact same thing.
You disagree with legal ethics. That’s fine. But there is a reason attorneys act or don’t act they way we do, and it’s not because we’re all mustache-twirling villains laughing in a smoke-filled room while we congratulate ourselves on being masters of the universe.
That said, there are personal lines I wouldn’t cross—but that’s because they wouldn’t meet my morals. They are welcome to find another lawyer. And I would be upfront with a client about those lines. Another attorney might have different lines, and while those might make me think they’re monstrous, it doesn’t necessarily means they’re bad lawyers.
You might hate the adversarial justice system, and the perverse incentives it takes to make it "work", in so far as it does.
But you might also want to read some history about the systems that existed before, and how bad they were. It's a shame our civics education is so terrible, and the reasons why things are the way they are is totally neglected.
People are increasingly thinking the bill of rights are just 10 random things that don't matter much anymore. But they're best viewed as the top 10 things the colonials were sick of the Monarchy doing to them. And number 5 is a lack of due process.
What does lack of due process look like? Being deprived of representation. Having your representation charged along with you. Being prevented from preparing a defense, perhaps by having certain evidence against you hidden from you, or having exculpatory evidence hidden from you, or perhaps by just having certain legal arguments being declared impermissible in the first place. That's actually one of the key differences between libel/slander in the US versus the UK to this day, from my lay persons understanding. In the US, truth is an absolute defense. Less so in the UK. Can't wrap my head around that one, but whatever.
It's easy to focus on the laywer who keeps his clients privilege as being "immoral". But he has a greater moral duty to upholding the norms that sustains due process. If he rolled on his client, and his client got charged with additional crimes because of it, and the courts accepted all that as valid evidence, absolutely everything about preparing a defense to charges is compromised. Public defenders already get accused to just walking their innocent clients through damning settlement agreements. Prosecutors and public defenders both get accused to being racially motivated. You want to empower them with one additional tool to just marshal people into jail?
I'm glad greater minds than those here built our system. Though I fear for the future of it. There may be ways to improve it, but I'm not seeing anyone thinking about any of the consequences of their proposed "fixes", or even how they ultimately fight against their own supposed goals. You can't just go "We get rid of checks and balances, things happen, and then people will be more moral and won't exploit the obvious freeway of abuse we've built out of what was once a narrow and expensive toll road"
Just because the system that the US has is better than the one they had previously, does not mean there are not things that need a fix.
Like a lawyer knowingly allowing an innocent man being sent to prison for 26 years.
Just because the system that the US has is better than the one they had previously, does not mean there are not things that need a fix.
Like a lawyer knowingly allowing an innocent man being sent to prison for 26 years.
Any system that considers that okay is broken. It sounds like some states have laws for handling it, at least?
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
No. because its an opositional system. Defense lawyers especially are in many cases working directly against the general interest on behalf of their clients. If the prosecution obtains evidence illegal, puts unreliable witnesses on the stand, or otherwise botches a case - of someone who is fairly obviously guilty. It is still their lawyers job to see that the case gets dismissed/acquitted. Even if they believe their client is a piece of shit, who will in all likelihood go out and commit more crimes.
The prosecution can not work solely for society at large, while the defense attorney works for society first and their client second.
Just because the system that the US has is better than the one they had previously, does not mean there are not things that need a fix.
Like a lawyer knowingly allowing an innocent man being sent to prison for 26 years.
The alternative being? If you tell your lawyer you committed a crime, they have to report that admission to the court? Or that a lawyer submitting a letter saying "Actually one of my clients who I can not name admitted to this crime" is cause for an acquittal?
+2
Options
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Just because the system that the US has is better than the one they had previously, does not mean there are not things that need a fix.
Like a lawyer knowingly allowing an innocent man being sent to prison for 26 years.
There is literally nothing he could do about it.
If he said my client said he did it. That can't be used as exculpatory because it is hearsay. The client already has invoked, and the lawyer that took an action would be disbarred, or at the very least suspended. Honestly the best he could do is talk to the detective on the DL about it (still an ethics violation that could warrant disbarment but harder to catch), and not reveal his client did it, but detectives are generally distrustful of defense attorneys.
When my grandpa practiced criminal law he hated his clients so much, he changed his practice to business law.
Now after the person has died, different rules go into effect that make the testimony permissible.
But the flip side is that we are protected from hearsay testimony for very good reason.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
No. because its an opositional system. Defense lawyers especially are in many cases working directly against the general interest on behalf of their clients. If the prosecution obtains evidence illegal, puts unreliable witnesses on the stand, or otherwise botches a case - of someone who is fairly obviously guilty. It is still their lawyers job to see that the case gets dismissed/acquitted. Even if they believe their client is a piece of shit, who will in all likelihood go out and commit more crimes.
The prosecution can not work solely for society at large, while the defense attorney works for society first and their client second.
Defense attorneys forcing the government to follow their own rules does, in fact, serve the public interest, as it protects us all. (This is why I have such an issue with the "got off on a technicality" mindset.) Things like the gay/trans "panic" defense, on the other hand, do go against the general welfare and should be rejected as unethical.
Not to mention that every woman that Bloom did represented has every right to sue to find out if she wasn't actually working to get her abuser off the hook, starting with the Sheen victims.
I have not seen any evidence presented that she was doing anything but working for the benefit of her client (or advertising what she could do for a future client). I'm not seeing why people are interpretating the bit about Sheen as indicating some conflict of interest. She's just saying that this tactic was effective on her when she was on the other side in a previous case so she knows it will work.
A mercenary who will go to bat for you to the limits of the law once you hire them and has experience working both sides of a lawsuit or case may not be your idea if the best lawyer but I think it is for some people.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Just because the system that the US has is better than the one they had previously, does not mean there are not things that need a fix.
Like a lawyer knowingly allowing an innocent man being sent to prison for 26 years.
Solving that specific hole is tricky, since the direct solution—creating an exception to attorney-client privilege to allow revealing past crimes—destroys the concept of a defense attorney.
In the Logan case, had Wilson’s attorneys revealed the truth without his permission, they would be acting against him. Put another way, they would have sworn to protect a person and then acted to directly harm them.
Imagine if you went into surgery for your appendix, and the surgeon cut out one of your kidneys and gave it to someone else. They might believe they have good reason for it, but that doesn’t change the fact that they hurt you when they were supposed to protect you.
Here’s a scenario of what could happen if we changed that rule without being very, very careful:
You’re defending someone in a three strikes jurisdiction. They’re on their second strike. While preparing the case, they admit to you that they have committed another crime. Without privilege, you are either under an affirmative duty to report or it’s your personal choice. Either way, you’re either harming the person you’re supposed to be representing or your client now has to take it on faith that you won’t destroy them.
The crime exceptions to attorney-client privilege exist to prevent further crime.
Off the top of my head, the only thing I can think of that would prevent this kind of harm but preserve due process would be:
-an exception to privilege for the express purpose of preventing/overturning a wrongful conviction
-doing so prevents the perpetrator from being charged with the crime
So, for Logan that would’ve meant Wilson’s attorneys could’ve revealed the truth, but Wilson would’ve been immune from prosecution for that murder.
I can already see two problems with that anyway:
-The victim/their family is permanently robbed of justice for the crime; they can only hope the perpetrator goes to jail for something else.
-You’d need a new evidentiary standard to ensure that the quasi confession was real. Even then, you would create a new industry of paying lifers to take the fall for other people’s crimes.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
Society came up with these legal ethics to begin with.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
Also, just because something technically respect professional ethics doesn't mean it should not have consequences outside of the profession. For example, not being on a reporting chain for abuse, or a committee for discipline, or being invited to parties.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
This is untrue.
There are laws against speeding, but i don't think that society views going 26 instead of 25 a moral issue, or that somehow it is immoral to drive on the left hand side of an empty road even though it is illegal. Lots of laws exist only because we need to structure various activities.
To say that there should not be gay/trans panic defenses is not to say that lawyers simply shouldn't do it, but to say that the law should not allow anyone to do it. The lawyers will follow the law (well, if they don't that is another, different problem). Professional ethics bind to a different code of conduct than personal ethics do. I have obligations as a teacher, but also as a person, and sometimes one overrides the other. If you want to make the case that the immorality of using such a defense should override the professional ethical concerns you need to make that case. Which you haven't, you've simply asserted how revolting it is (which I agree with, it is revolting), but you have no argument as to why it should override an attorney's professional responsibility. Let alone argued why an attorney's professional responsibility should include this. Other than it is immoral for a human person. But just because it's immoral for a person to do, doesn't mean it is immoral for a professional to do.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
You answered your own question in a way.
The attorney’s primary responsibility is to his client - the defense is within the parameters of the law (I assume) - hence the attorney is behaving ethically correct and representing the client to the best of his ability.
Would I represent a client and argue those things? No, because they go against my own beliefs.
Work on changing the law, not undermining the already shaky belief in the justice system.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
In principle, laws apply to everyone not just people who get the attention of the twitter mob.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Defense lawyers can always work around those laws that supposedly make those defenses illegal. Rape shield laws usually have a bunch of exceptions that lawyers can take advantage of.*
The gay panic defense is not illegal in many states, and it would not surprise me if lawyers have figured out ways to make it while still technically following the rules that don't allow it.
I am sure that defense lawyers of white people who killed black people know how to use racial fears in ways that don't explicitly use "he was a scary black men so it was self-defense!"
Former Cleveland Police Department Sgt. Chad Langdon, who was the lead investigator on the case, also testified that an 11-year-old - due to her emotional immaturity - legally cannot give consent for a sexual encounter.
Taylor questioned why the underage girl had not been charged with anything for choosing to violate that rule, indicating that she was "the reason" that the encounters happened.
"Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?' " Taylor asked.
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edited September 2019
I'd be more tolerant of the "the occasional inequities of the justice system" argument if they did, in fact, only happened to be occasional. That seems to be more and more proven to be the wrong metric. Frequent or systematic seems to be the appropriate word, and seemingly always has been. The only difference is that the internet allows greater amplification and social awareness of just how widespread these inequities are.
Defense lawyers can always work around those laws that supposedly make those defenses illegal. Rape shield laws usually have a bunch of exceptions that lawyers can take advantage of.*
The gay panic defense is not illegal in many states, and it would not surprise me if lawyers have figured out ways to make it while still technically following the rules that don't allow it.
I am sure that defense lawyers of white people who killed black people know how to use racial fears in ways that don't explicitly use "he was a scary black men so it was self-defense!"
Former Cleveland Police Department Sgt. Chad Langdon, who was the lead investigator on the case, also testified that an 11-year-old - due to her emotional immaturity - legally cannot give consent for a sexual encounter.
Taylor questioned why the underage girl had not been charged with anything for choosing to violate that rule, indicating that she was "the reason" that the encounters happened.
"Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?' " Taylor asked.
This illustrates another good point - even if we make these defenses illegal, there is still purpose to also hold them as unethical, because there will be individuals who will look to see how far they can push matters. In those cases, the legal community should be stepping in and holding the individual accountable.
In fact, one of the largest problems with the legal community is its unwillingness to actually hold its members accountable - this applies not just to defense lawyers, but prosecutors, judges, and law professors, among others.
IANAL, but it seems to me that one aspect of the defense attorney's job is to make sure the prosecution does theirs. The point of a trial isn't so much literally "is this person innocent or guilty," as it is "is society justified in punishing this person for the thing they are accused of?" If they are found innocent, then obviously no, society is not justified in punishing them. But if they did the thing (as far as the court can tell), and the law says they had a valid reason for doing the thing, then society is also not legally justified in punishing them for the thing. For a defense attorney not to pursue a legal avenue available to them, even if it's abhorrent, is the same as setting themselves above the law at their client's expense - which is anathema to the whole concept of attorneys.
The point of having laws at all is to have a shared structure and shared expectations for how society works. We can all agree on them even if we don't agree with them. The law can be wrong and bad, but that is not a trial lawyer's problem. In a criminal trial, the law as written has to be absolute, or the whole system falls apart.
Defense lawyers can always work around those laws that supposedly make those defenses illegal. Rape shield laws usually have a bunch of exceptions that lawyers can take advantage of.*
The gay panic defense is not illegal in many states, and it would not surprise me if lawyers have figured out ways to make it while still technically following the rules that don't allow it.
I am sure that defense lawyers of white people who killed black people know how to use racial fears in ways that don't explicitly use "he was a scary black men so it was self-defense!"
Former Cleveland Police Department Sgt. Chad Langdon, who was the lead investigator on the case, also testified that an 11-year-old - due to her emotional immaturity - legally cannot give consent for a sexual encounter.
Taylor questioned why the underage girl had not been charged with anything for choosing to violate that rule, indicating that she was "the reason" that the encounters happened.
"Like the spider and the fly. Wasn't she saying, 'Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?' " Taylor asked.
This illustrates another good point - even if we make these defenses illegal, there is still purpose to also hold them as unethical, because there will be individuals who will look to see how far they can push matters. In those cases, the legal community should be stepping in and holding the individual accountable.
In fact, one of the largest problems with the legal community is its unwillingness to actually hold its members accountable - this applies not just to defense lawyers, but prosecutors, judges, and law professors, among others.
That last bit I completely agree with. In some respects, lawyers operate with virtual impunity.
Basically, if it doesn’t involve taking/moving the client’s money at the wrong time, you’re unlikely to face serious consequences. Even if you do, what you’ll get is usually less than what you’re at risk of getting.
From what I’ve seen—and this is just my personal observations in my own little corner of legal land—this is not from a lack of reporting, but a lack of investigation/pursuit on the part of bar associations. I’ve seen lawyers pull all kinds of unethical or unprofessional stuff, from petty bullshit like faking their way out of a hearing because they don’t feel like traveling to epic, end-of-the-world shit like forging a client’s signature.
The most common is probably attorneys taking people’s money when they know—absolutely know—that the case is without merit and the client is simply wasting their time and resources. Bad enough on its own, even worse when the client in question isn’t some fat cat and has to put everything they have into a lawyer. I’ve seen people who took collections at their place of worship to pay for lawyers when any first-year law student would see that it was pointless. That’s some of the shit that keeps me up at night. I can’t stand lawyers like that. I’d rather go back to serving popcorn than make my living like that.
A court of law is not to decide if society is to mete out punishment or not. A court of law is for determining if the system should mete out punishment or not.
As has been well-established in this thread and well before, the system is not functioning as it should.
And here's another aspect of that Texas case, from reading the article and not just the headline. The defense wasn't "This girl clearly wanted it, look what she was wearing". The defense was "Multiple people accused say she lied about her age and she consented." The girl herself says she consented. The article further says one of the defendants saying she lied about her age "had no corroborating evidence", but that another witness who says she lied about her age was prohibited from providing that testimony.
Also note all the defendants are black. The race of the victim is unknown, but all the black defendants are being described as a "pack of dogs".
Ultimately it doesn't matter. Last I heard statutory rape was a strict liability crime. Not knowing the victims age, them lying about their age, picking them up in an 18+ club which they got into with a fake id, meeting them on a job they'd gotten with a stolen identity and a legitimately issued state drivers license saying they are over 18, are all not adequate defenses.
But to say it's immoral for a laywer defending their underprivileged clients to make the point of fact claim that they didn't know the victims age, she point of fact consented which nobody disputes, and that she sought it out, is baffling.
But sure, lets get rid of the adversarial system, and ban assorted defenses you find immoral. I'm sure it won't result in more black boys being bused from schools to prisons.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
Hence, the don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets.
**
I’m also not sure they should be. Morality is malleable and personal. Legal duties shouldn’t be either of those things.
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
You answered your own question in a way.
The attorney’s primary responsibility is to his client - the defense is within the parameters of the law (I assume) - hence the attorney is behaving ethically correct and representing the client to the best of his ability.
Would I represent a client and argue those things? No, because they go against my own beliefs.
Work on changing the law, not undermining the already shaky belief in the justice system.
Except that a large part of why that belief is shaky is because people see the legal community treat as legitimate such defenses as "finding out that my date was transgender caused me to panic to such a degree that I felt like I had to beat them to protect myself", "I'm not guilty of rape because she's a complete slut", "can't you see how this 11 year old girl is a temptress?", etc. - and respond accordingly. The Persky recall was a great example of this - the legal community repeatedly failed to hold a judge who routinely downplayed sexual assault and allowed slut-shaming defenses accountable, forcing the community as a whole to use the only tool they had left - recall. Once recall started, the legal community was livid, and did things such as arguing that the victim in the Brock Turner case was unable to write her victim impact statement. In the end, the recall passed, and in response...the legal community then argued how the recall was a horrible loss for everyone while ignoring their role in bringing it about.
From where I stand, one of the best ways for faith in the legal profession to be restored is for the legal community to start calling this conduct out as unethical.
And here's another aspect of that Texas case, from reading the article and not just the headline. The defense wasn't "This girl clearly wanted it, look what she was wearing". The defense was "Multiple people accused say she lied about her age and she consented." The girl herself says she consented. The article further says one of the defendants saying she lied about her age "had no corroborating evidence", but that another witness who says she lied about her age was prohibited from providing that testimony.
Also note all the defendants are black. The race of the victim is unknown, but all the black defendants are being described as a "pack of dogs".
Ultimately it doesn't matter. Last I heard statutory rape was a strict liability crime. Not knowing the victims age, them lying about their age, picking them up in an 18+ club which they got into with a fake id, meeting them on a job they'd gotten with a stolen identity and a legitimately issued state drivers license saying they are over 18, are all not adequate defenses.
But to say it's immoral for a laywer defending their underprivileged clients to make the point of fact claim that they didn't know the victims age, she point of fact consented which nobody disputes, and that she sought it out, is baffling.
But sure, lets get rid of the adversarial system, and ban assorted defenses you find immoral. I'm sure it won't result in more black boys being bused from schools to prisons.
When the lawyer is starting to sound like Humbert Humbert, they've gone too far. I'm pretty sure that one can make those defenses while not sounding like they're cribbing from Nabokov.
I like that no one mentions in all of this the failure of the system that put the innocent man in jail in the first place. That is a failure of both prosecutor and defense regardless of side information. There was in all likelyhood there was evidence to point to the correct person but for some reason the prosecution decided to go after someone else (maybe because it was easier).
I like that no one mentions in all of this the failure of the system that put the innocent man in jail in the first place. That is a failure of both prosecutor and defense regardless of side information. There was in all likelyhood there was evidence to point to the correct person but for some reason the prosecution decided to go after someone else (maybe because it was easier).
When an innocent man goes to prison, I will always blame the prosecution more than the defense, because prosecutors throw the fucking book at every one to convince them to do a plea bargain rather than go to trial, and public defenders having extremely large caseloads that prevent them from providing each of their clients the best possible defense they can is part of our police and larger justice system that prosecutors are explicitly bound to in ways that defense attorneys are not.
Yeah, blame for the prosecutor is automatic.
In this particular instance, we just have a defense attorney who is also carrying shit ton of blame.
Even if they are legally in the clear.
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Also trying to google it, but maybe someone will have better luck. I'm genuinely curious if my observation is more or less on the money. That most sexual assault cases largely go unnoticed by the public. That's probably partly because this bullshit is too common because our society really does have an issue with legitimizing rape culture.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Yeah, she has proven her legal practice is already plenty victim focused.
I can't really imagine trusting someone like this to run my case, or really have any desire to sit in the same room with her if I was a victim of sexual assault. I rather hope this get enough attention so women know the kind of person they are dealing with before going to her for help.
On my first day of law school, after they took our ID pictures and handed us don’t-kill-yourself pamphlets, the professors herded us into a lecture hall and played a CBS story about Alton Logan.
In 1982, Alton Logan was convicted of killing a security guard at a Chicago McDonald’s and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, another man—Andrew Wilson, already imprisoned on another charge—told his lawyers that he had actually committed the murder. He thought it was funny. He forbade his attorneys from revealing this until after he died.
Wilson died 26 years later. His attorneys revealed Alton Logan’s innocence, was released and exonerated. After spending 26 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
What Wilson’s lawyers did was awful. They let an innocent man suffer for a quarter of a century. From the standpoint of legal ethics? They did exactly the right thing.*
Their client had told them, in confidence, that he had committed a crime. Attorney-client privilege attached—they were legally barred from revealing it unless and until their client gave affirmative consent. Had they broken privilege, breaking their oaths as attorneys, the evidence would’ve probably been thrown out of court as illegally obtained.
My professors showed us this, and I’m telling you, to illustrate that the absolute focus of legal ethics is to protect the client.
Legal ethics are not about morality. At all.**
That’s because the bedrock of all Western law is that a client should trust their counsel absolutely.
An attorney’s purpose is to protect their client to the best of their ability within the law.
This is what disgusts me about Bloom as an attorney—what disgusts me about her as a human is obvious. As shown by the Sheen example, she has likely abrogated her duty to at least some of her clients for personal gain. To Weinstein she offered to falsify evidence and present it before a court of law. She is a disgrace to the profession regardless of any other factor.
*
**
100 years ago, it was widely considered moral to believe interracial marriage was a sin. 50 years ago, it was widely considered moral to disown a child if they were LGBT. In 100 years, what about us will be widely considered immoral?
If you took a time machine to 1919 and hired a lawyer, their ethical duties to you would nearly identical to what you’d get today.
Legal ethics may change, and there are places where I think they should, but I’m not sure they should be based on something as transient as morality.
So, in short, your profession's ethics stole a quarter century from an innocent man. And lawyers wonder why they have the reputation that they do. And to argue that morality is "transient" dodges the point - professional associations and communities have an obligation to society at large to conduct themselves in a manner that does the least harm possible.
The lawyer than enabled this, knowingly, did the "right" thing.
Anyone who seriously argues this really needs to take a good look at themselves in the mirror.
Now, a lawyer lying on the stand on behalf of their client, or spreading a disinformation campaign despite knowing the truth from their client, I think those go above and beyond legal privilege and can obviously be called unethical.
There should be some limits.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-crime-fraud-exception-the-attorney-client-privilege.html further reading here.
Say you get into some sort of legal trouble—maybe criminal, maybe “just” your livelihood—and it’s the worst moment of your life.
You go to an attorney with the worst problem you’ve ever had. You put your life, maybe literally, in their hands.
In your scenario, your attorney can then decide it’s the “least harm,” to let your life get destroyed and your only recourse is to...hire another attorney, who may do the exact same thing.
You disagree with legal ethics. That’s fine. But there is a reason attorneys act or don’t act they way we do, and it’s not because we’re all mustache-twirling villains laughing in a smoke-filled room while we congratulate ourselves on being masters of the universe.
That said, there are personal lines I wouldn’t cross—but that’s because they wouldn’t meet my morals. They are welcome to find another lawyer. And I would be upfront with a client about those lines. Another attorney might have different lines, and while those might make me think they’re monstrous, it doesn’t necessarily means they’re bad lawyers.
But you might also want to read some history about the systems that existed before, and how bad they were. It's a shame our civics education is so terrible, and the reasons why things are the way they are is totally neglected.
People are increasingly thinking the bill of rights are just 10 random things that don't matter much anymore. But they're best viewed as the top 10 things the colonials were sick of the Monarchy doing to them. And number 5 is a lack of due process.
What does lack of due process look like? Being deprived of representation. Having your representation charged along with you. Being prevented from preparing a defense, perhaps by having certain evidence against you hidden from you, or having exculpatory evidence hidden from you, or perhaps by just having certain legal arguments being declared impermissible in the first place. That's actually one of the key differences between libel/slander in the US versus the UK to this day, from my lay persons understanding. In the US, truth is an absolute defense. Less so in the UK. Can't wrap my head around that one, but whatever.
It's easy to focus on the laywer who keeps his clients privilege as being "immoral". But he has a greater moral duty to upholding the norms that sustains due process. If he rolled on his client, and his client got charged with additional crimes because of it, and the courts accepted all that as valid evidence, absolutely everything about preparing a defense to charges is compromised. Public defenders already get accused to just walking their innocent clients through damning settlement agreements. Prosecutors and public defenders both get accused to being racially motivated. You want to empower them with one additional tool to just marshal people into jail?
I'm glad greater minds than those here built our system. Though I fear for the future of it. There may be ways to improve it, but I'm not seeing anyone thinking about any of the consequences of their proposed "fixes", or even how they ultimately fight against their own supposed goals. You can't just go "We get rid of checks and balances, things happen, and then people will be more moral and won't exploit the obvious freeway of abuse we've built out of what was once a narrow and expensive toll road"
Like a lawyer knowingly allowing an innocent man being sent to prison for 26 years.
Any system that considers that okay is broken. It sounds like some states have laws for handling it, at least?
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No. because its an opositional system. Defense lawyers especially are in many cases working directly against the general interest on behalf of their clients. If the prosecution obtains evidence illegal, puts unreliable witnesses on the stand, or otherwise botches a case - of someone who is fairly obviously guilty. It is still their lawyers job to see that the case gets dismissed/acquitted. Even if they believe their client is a piece of shit, who will in all likelihood go out and commit more crimes.
The prosecution can not work solely for society at large, while the defense attorney works for society first and their client second.
The alternative being? If you tell your lawyer you committed a crime, they have to report that admission to the court? Or that a lawyer submitting a letter saying "Actually one of my clients who I can not name admitted to this crime" is cause for an acquittal?
If he said my client said he did it. That can't be used as exculpatory because it is hearsay. The client already has invoked, and the lawyer that took an action would be disbarred, or at the very least suspended. Honestly the best he could do is talk to the detective on the DL about it (still an ethics violation that could warrant disbarment but harder to catch), and not reveal his client did it, but detectives are generally distrustful of defense attorneys.
When my grandpa practiced criminal law he hated his clients so much, he changed his practice to business law.
Now after the person has died, different rules go into effect that make the testimony permissible.
But the flip side is that we are protected from hearsay testimony for very good reason.
Defense attorneys forcing the government to follow their own rules does, in fact, serve the public interest, as it protects us all. (This is why I have such an issue with the "got off on a technicality" mindset.) Things like the gay/trans "panic" defense, on the other hand, do go against the general welfare and should be rejected as unethical.
I have not seen any evidence presented that she was doing anything but working for the benefit of her client (or advertising what she could do for a future client). I'm not seeing why people are interpretating the bit about Sheen as indicating some conflict of interest. She's just saying that this tactic was effective on her when she was on the other side in a previous case so she knows it will work.
A mercenary who will go to bat for you to the limits of the law once you hire them and has experience working both sides of a lawsuit or case may not be your idea if the best lawyer but I think it is for some people.
Solving that specific hole is tricky, since the direct solution—creating an exception to attorney-client privilege to allow revealing past crimes—destroys the concept of a defense attorney.
In the Logan case, had Wilson’s attorneys revealed the truth without his permission, they would be acting against him. Put another way, they would have sworn to protect a person and then acted to directly harm them.
Imagine if you went into surgery for your appendix, and the surgeon cut out one of your kidneys and gave it to someone else. They might believe they have good reason for it, but that doesn’t change the fact that they hurt you when they were supposed to protect you.
Here’s a scenario of what could happen if we changed that rule without being very, very careful:
You’re defending someone in a three strikes jurisdiction. They’re on their second strike. While preparing the case, they admit to you that they have committed another crime. Without privilege, you are either under an affirmative duty to report or it’s your personal choice. Either way, you’re either harming the person you’re supposed to be representing or your client now has to take it on faith that you won’t destroy them.
The crime exceptions to attorney-client privilege exist to prevent further crime.
Off the top of my head, the only thing I can think of that would prevent this kind of harm but preserve due process would be:
-an exception to privilege for the express purpose of preventing/overturning a wrongful conviction
-doing so prevents the perpetrator from being charged with the crime
So, for Logan that would’ve meant Wilson’s attorneys could’ve revealed the truth, but Wilson would’ve been immune from prosecution for that murder.
I can already see two problems with that anyway:
-The victim/their family is permanently robbed of justice for the crime; they can only hope the perpetrator goes to jail for something else.
-You’d need a new evidentiary standard to ensure that the quasi confession was real. Even then, you would create a new industry of paying lifers to take the fall for other people’s crimes.
You are arguing that the suitable defense of a person is reliant on what society deems ethically correct. History shows that society’s ethical standards are questionable at best.
So, do you feel that the gay/trans "panic" defense is ethical? How about defending a rape charge by putting the victim's sexual history on trial? And arguing that the answer is for those defenses to be made illegal is conceding the point, because laws are, in a way, how a society states what it deems "ethically correct".
Society came up with these legal ethics to begin with.
Also, just because something technically respect professional ethics doesn't mean it should not have consequences outside of the profession. For example, not being on a reporting chain for abuse, or a committee for discipline, or being invited to parties.
This is untrue.
There are laws against speeding, but i don't think that society views going 26 instead of 25 a moral issue, or that somehow it is immoral to drive on the left hand side of an empty road even though it is illegal. Lots of laws exist only because we need to structure various activities.
To say that there should not be gay/trans panic defenses is not to say that lawyers simply shouldn't do it, but to say that the law should not allow anyone to do it. The lawyers will follow the law (well, if they don't that is another, different problem). Professional ethics bind to a different code of conduct than personal ethics do. I have obligations as a teacher, but also as a person, and sometimes one overrides the other. If you want to make the case that the immorality of using such a defense should override the professional ethical concerns you need to make that case. Which you haven't, you've simply asserted how revolting it is (which I agree with, it is revolting), but you have no argument as to why it should override an attorney's professional responsibility. Let alone argued why an attorney's professional responsibility should include this. Other than it is immoral for a human person. But just because it's immoral for a person to do, doesn't mean it is immoral for a professional to do.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
You answered your own question in a way.
The attorney’s primary responsibility is to his client - the defense is within the parameters of the law (I assume) - hence the attorney is behaving ethically correct and representing the client to the best of his ability.
Would I represent a client and argue those things? No, because they go against my own beliefs.
Work on changing the law, not undermining the already shaky belief in the justice system.
In principle, laws apply to everyone not just people who get the attention of the twitter mob.
The gay panic defense is not illegal in many states, and it would not surprise me if lawyers have figured out ways to make it while still technically following the rules that don't allow it.
I am sure that defense lawyers of white people who killed black people know how to use racial fears in ways that don't explicitly use "he was a scary black men so it was self-defense!"
*For example, a Texas defense lawyer who in 2012 attacked a girl who was 11 at the time of the rape as a seductress.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Lawyer-likens-gang-rape-victim-to-a-spider-luring-4071735.php
This illustrates another good point - even if we make these defenses illegal, there is still purpose to also hold them as unethical, because there will be individuals who will look to see how far they can push matters. In those cases, the legal community should be stepping in and holding the individual accountable.
In fact, one of the largest problems with the legal community is its unwillingness to actually hold its members accountable - this applies not just to defense lawyers, but prosecutors, judges, and law professors, among others.
The point of having laws at all is to have a shared structure and shared expectations for how society works. We can all agree on them even if we don't agree with them. The law can be wrong and bad, but that is not a trial lawyer's problem. In a criminal trial, the law as written has to be absolute, or the whole system falls apart.
That last bit I completely agree with. In some respects, lawyers operate with virtual impunity.
Basically, if it doesn’t involve taking/moving the client’s money at the wrong time, you’re unlikely to face serious consequences. Even if you do, what you’ll get is usually less than what you’re at risk of getting.
From what I’ve seen—and this is just my personal observations in my own little corner of legal land—this is not from a lack of reporting, but a lack of investigation/pursuit on the part of bar associations. I’ve seen lawyers pull all kinds of unethical or unprofessional stuff, from petty bullshit like faking their way out of a hearing because they don’t feel like traveling to epic, end-of-the-world shit like forging a client’s signature.
The most common is probably attorneys taking people’s money when they know—absolutely know—that the case is without merit and the client is simply wasting their time and resources. Bad enough on its own, even worse when the client in question isn’t some fat cat and has to put everything they have into a lawyer. I’ve seen people who took collections at their place of worship to pay for lawyers when any first-year law student would see that it was pointless. That’s some of the shit that keeps me up at night. I can’t stand lawyers like that. I’d rather go back to serving popcorn than make my living like that.
As has been well-established in this thread and well before, the system is not functioning as it should.
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Also note all the defendants are black. The race of the victim is unknown, but all the black defendants are being described as a "pack of dogs".
Ultimately it doesn't matter. Last I heard statutory rape was a strict liability crime. Not knowing the victims age, them lying about their age, picking them up in an 18+ club which they got into with a fake id, meeting them on a job they'd gotten with a stolen identity and a legitimately issued state drivers license saying they are over 18, are all not adequate defenses.
But to say it's immoral for a laywer defending their underprivileged clients to make the point of fact claim that they didn't know the victims age, she point of fact consented which nobody disputes, and that she sought it out, is baffling.
But sure, lets get rid of the adversarial system, and ban assorted defenses you find immoral. I'm sure it won't result in more black boys being bused from schools to prisons.
Except that a large part of why that belief is shaky is because people see the legal community treat as legitimate such defenses as "finding out that my date was transgender caused me to panic to such a degree that I felt like I had to beat them to protect myself", "I'm not guilty of rape because she's a complete slut", "can't you see how this 11 year old girl is a temptress?", etc. - and respond accordingly. The Persky recall was a great example of this - the legal community repeatedly failed to hold a judge who routinely downplayed sexual assault and allowed slut-shaming defenses accountable, forcing the community as a whole to use the only tool they had left - recall. Once recall started, the legal community was livid, and did things such as arguing that the victim in the Brock Turner case was unable to write her victim impact statement. In the end, the recall passed, and in response...the legal community then argued how the recall was a horrible loss for everyone while ignoring their role in bringing it about.
From where I stand, one of the best ways for faith in the legal profession to be restored is for the legal community to start calling this conduct out as unethical.
When the lawyer is starting to sound like Humbert Humbert, they've gone too far. I'm pretty sure that one can make those defenses while not sounding like they're cribbing from Nabokov.
When an innocent man goes to prison, I will always blame the prosecution more than the defense, because prosecutors throw the fucking book at every one to convince them to do a plea bargain rather than go to trial, and public defenders having extremely large caseloads that prevent them from providing each of their clients the best possible defense they can is part of our police and larger justice system that prosecutors are explicitly bound to in ways that defense attorneys are not.
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In this particular instance, we just have a defense attorney who is also carrying shit ton of blame.
Even if they are legally in the clear.