I was recently chatting with someone about my dreams of becoming a defense attorney, and a subject came up that I have been forced to reflect on many times before.  The person asked me, “Would you be able to defend a rapist murderer or a serial killer?”  Now let me start off by saying that I am a moral man.  How can anyone not condemn someone who has done something as bad as what had been put into that question?  Could I really live with myself if I successfully allowed someone as terrible as that to walk the streets and strike again? 

If this man didn’t confess on his own accord, I could live with it.  Does this make me an awful person?  Hardly.  I would be a worse person if I did NOT defend him.  That might seem insane to some people, but I believe in the right to have a lawyer defend you at your trial.  Let’s detach ourselves from the evil of this man’s alleged crimes, and ask ourselves if we would like to be defended if we were on trial for the same crimes.  “But we didn’t commit these awful crimes,” you say.  Exactly.  Did it ever occur to you that maybe he didn’t either?  Even if the evidence is stacked against someone, there is always that chance that they might be innocent.  Human beings are always so quick to jump to conclusions and condemn someone to prison or death.  We don’t even consider the fact that maybe there was a mix up somehow.  That is exactly why I would want to be a defense attorney.  If I were wrongfully accused and in that chair myself, I would want someone defending me.  Even if 95% of my clients were terrible people who deserve all that they get, maybe I would be able to save that one innocent man.  To me, that would more than make up for all the murdering rapists I tried to defend. 

Being wrongfully charged and convicted of a crime is possibly the worst thing that could happen to you.  I can’t think of many worse tragedies that could befall you.  Some of us fail to realize how often mistakes like this happen.  There are people who are wrongfully convicted every day.  That is the flaw of a jury trial.  People make mistakes.  How many of you have ever been to jury duty?  How many of you voted along with the rest of the jurors in order to get out of there quicker?  That signals something wrong.  The justice system is not perfect, but most of us fail to see that before we become the victim.

Like I said, it is your duty as a lawyer to defend those you request a defense.  This is the only thing preventing these people from life in prison.  The only line is drawn when there is an uncoerced admission of guilt, in which case, there is no way to justify the defense of that man. 

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