Another reason why lawyers defend criminals is to protect the rights of the accused. Everyone has a right to a fair trial, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent. By defending criminals, lawyers are ensuring that these rights are upheld.
May 10, 2022 · By defending criminals, lawyers help to give them a voice and to tell their story. This allows us to see them as complex individuals and to understand the circumstances that led them to commit a crime. When we only see criminals as one-dimensional, it is easy to demonize them and forget that they are human beings.
There is one practical and persuasive reason - aside from the love for the job and all the nervousness and adrenaline and gratification you derive from “winning” a case - for defense attorneys to defend the truly guilty: Without criminals paying the bills, there wouldn’t be enough work as a criminal defense attorney to make a living.
Lawyers defend people who are accused of crimes. The accused are guaranteed legal representation by the constitution. If no lawyers provided defenses, there could be no criminal trials. Without access to an attorney, no trial is possible, no conviction is possible, and the criminal judicial system grinds to a halt.
Mar 26, 2020 · Protect you from self-incrimination: Officers often ask suspects questions in hopes of gaining evidence against them. Even answering innocent-seeming questions could backfire, which is why your attorney can advise you on when to answer and not answer questions.
Criminal defense lawyers oftentimes get a bad rap. On the surface, many people simply see criminal defense lawyers as “those guys who make money trying to put rapists and murderers back on the street,” but that’s narrow-minded, and quite frankly that’s an unfair way to judge someone’s character.
A doctor doesn’t run a background check on a patient before performing a life-saving surgery, and it’s not our job either. Criminal defense attorneys are simply tasked with providing the facts and getting to the truth of the matter. Ultimately, it’s the judge or jury’s decision to determine guilt, not ours. 4.
The defense attorney's job is to ensure that the prosecutor has demonstrated in court a case that the defendant is guilty in a way that meets the standard of proof. This is the check and balance against the prosecutors that protects people who are innocent.
A lawyer has to be impartial. They cannot think that client X (let's call him Jim) committed a murder if he denies it, even if Jim's prints are found on a gun. It could have been his hunting gun that was stolen by a robber and used in an unrelated murder, it could have been planted, or bad evidence, etc.
The right to defend oneself, or to have a lawyer act on one's behalf is a fundamental right available to every person; if lawyers pick and choose, the equality/fairness of this right is eroded. To paraphrase a famous quote: It is better to let 99 guilty people go free than to imprison 1 innocent person.