Alan Dershowitz once wrote
Attorneys who defend the guilty and despised will never have a secure or comfortable place in any society. Their motives will be misunderstood; they will be suspected of placing loyalty to clients above loyalty to society; they will be associated in the public mind with the misdeeds of their clients…[t]here will never be a Nobel Prize for defense attorneys who succeed in freeing the guilty…[t]he public sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between the noble and the sleazy; the very fact that a defense attorney represents a guilty client leads some to conclude that the lawyer must be sleazy. Being so regarded is an occupational hazard of all zealous defense attorneys.
According to the general consensus the words Noble and Criminal Defense Lawyer in the same sentence seem to clash – to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. The term Criminal Lawyer seems redundant. The role of the criminal defense attorney is one of the most difficult and misunderstood roles in the criminal justice system. They are often ridiculed, despised and pointedly asked How can you represent guilty clients? The question should be How can you not?
In our society, based upon the rule of law and due process, every individual, no matter how offensive he or she may be to the general public’s sense of morality or justice, deserves adequate representation. It is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and Constitution of every state of the nation. No state or group is seriously seeking a change to these fundamental protections. And, on the abstract, the zealous defender of the down- trodden does sound kind of noble. It is when abstract meets the cold light of everyday life, with rampant crime and dastardly deeds, that nobility gets tossed aside to be replaced with society’s thirst for immediate retribution.
We can look beyond our own borders to nations of the past that set aside zealous representation and went right for retribution. Nazi Germany, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Stalinist Russia -- all had the formal rule of law. But they had no criminal defense attorney that could stand against the repression of their governments. No zealous advocates defending the clearly guilty dissenter. They had trials, but it was not to accomplish justice. They were just for show.
Even at present, China of today is renowned for its zealous defense attorneys. Oh wait, I mean for political repression and the swift imprisonment and execution of any that dare challenge its rigid society. Our system can be subjected to distaste and public anger because guilty individuals may go free. Our system of criminal justice is certainly imperfect. But compare the alternatives.
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