I figure my stand will bring me fewer clients, but a better class of clients.
These words from Houston Lawyer Mark Bennett will strike most people as absurd. After all, Mark is a criminal defense lawyer, and we’re talking about criminal defendants here. No, Mark doesn’t mean innocent clients, or clients who pay their bills. He means exactly what he says, a better class of client.
The subject of Mark’s quote is snitches. Rats, cooperators, stool pigeons. Call it what you will. He’s talking about those defendants who, when faced with the consequences of their actions, would rather talk to the government then face the music.
The primary weapon of the United States of America in its “war” on crime, to be distinguished from its “war” on whatever else is the flavor of the month, is not crime scene investigations, nor DNA, nor surveillance cameras. It’s snitches. It’s the willingness of our government to adopt a criminal as their own, regardless of what the criminal has done, how evil he may be or how many people he has harmed, as their own.
Ironically, the same individual that prosecutors and law enforcement would spit on, beat to pulp in the back room, and certainly never believe a word out of his mouth, is miraculously transformed into a near-saint when he is signed up as a Confidential Informant. Picture Sammy “The Bull” Gravano saying, “but it was only 19 murders…”
You see, the government would never call this person a snitch or rat, since those terms are too pejorative. No siree. They go from the defendant scum-of-the-earth to Confidential Informant in the blink of an eye. Confidential Informant sounds like an official title. It is better than benign, it makes them sound almost clean. They are now doing God’s work, informing the government of bad things being done by others.
We all remember the famous line from TV character Beretta, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” Hey, Robert Blake took his chances and beat the rap. This embodied the manly view of how criminals behaved. There are no atheists in a foxhole, and no rats in a jail cell. At least not in Beretta’s world.
But the scenery changed after 1987 when the combination of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the percentage of beating the wrap combined to make a 30 year theoretical sentence a very large gun to the head of a federal defendant. And so they blinked, ran to the United States Attorney’s office and started vomiting whatever information they possessed in the hope of saving their sorry lives. It was pathetic, and I can picture AUSA and agents chuckling as each sad, broken defendant was removed from the conference room in cuffs.
This is important,so I’ll say this again: Neither prosecutor nor agent would believe defendant scum-of-the-earth if he told them the time of day, but the second he turns into Confidential Informant, his every utterance is as true and perfect as if spoken by the Pope. It’s not magic. Its self-interest.
And so the split between snitches and defendants developed, with snitches quickly becoming the predominant breed. In the scheme of honor amongst criminals (or anyone else for that matter), the snitch was the bottom of the pyramid.
Mark Bennett speaks of representing those defendants who, despite the availability of the easy route that involves merely the sacrifice of one’s soul, chose not to give up their brothers, and mothers, and friends, but to stand and fight. These defendants test the government. Through their fortitude, the conduct of the government is tested. Because of these fights, the Constitution is defended.
It is not that these are necessarily good people. They may well be heinous criminals. But without them, there would be no one to challenge unlawful searches, false confessions, governmental misconduct. Without the stand-up client, law enforcement would have free rein to run roughshod over all of us.
There is no great skill involved in representing a snitch. It’s a baby-sitting job, helping government prosecutors to get the story they want in the way they want it. For self-loathing criminal defense lawyers, it may make them feel that they are ridding society of criminals, which suits their inclinations better than defending the accused. For others, it’s merely the mechanism by which their client gets less time, trading what little integrity they might have for the hope of a few months off the tail end of their sentence.
So when Mark wrote of a better class of client, it was about those clients who, despite all the wrong they may have done in their lives, decided that it was better to go down as an honest criminal than to sell the only thing they had left for 30 pieces of silver. Someday, the snitch apparatus upon which the government so conveniently relies will fall out of favor and will be seen as the blight on our system of justice that it is. Then, those lawyers, like Mark Bennett (and like me), who rejected the path to the government’s door will be better understood as the ones who stood firm for the American system of criminal justice, and who refused to facilitate the death of the Constitution.
These words from Houston Lawyer Mark Bennett will strike most people as absurd. After all, Mark is a criminal defense lawyer, and we’re talking about criminal defendants here. No, Mark doesn’t mean innocent clients, or clients who pay their bills. He means exactly what he says, a better class of client.
The subject of Mark’s quote is snitches. Rats, cooperators, stool pigeons. Call it what you will. He’s talking about those defendants who, when faced with the consequences of their actions, would rather talk to the government then face the music.
The primary weapon of the United States of America in its “war” on crime, to be distinguished from its “war” on whatever else is the flavor of the month, is not crime scene investigations, nor DNA, nor surveillance cameras. It’s snitches. It’s the willingness of our government to adopt a criminal as their own, regardless of what the criminal has done, how evil he may be or how many people he has harmed, as their own.
Ironically, the same individual that prosecutors and law enforcement would spit on, beat to pulp in the back room, and certainly never believe a word out of his mouth, is miraculously transformed into a near-saint when he is signed up as a Confidential Informant. Picture Sammy “The Bull” Gravano saying, “but it was only 19 murders…”
You see, the government would never call this person a snitch or rat, since those terms are too pejorative. No siree. They go from the defendant scum-of-the-earth to Confidential Informant in the blink of an eye. Confidential Informant sounds like an official title. It is better than benign, it makes them sound almost clean. They are now doing God’s work, informing the government of bad things being done by others.
We all remember the famous line from TV character Beretta, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” Hey, Robert Blake took his chances and beat the rap. This embodied the manly view of how criminals behaved. There are no atheists in a foxhole, and no rats in a jail cell. At least not in Beretta’s world.
But the scenery changed after 1987 when the combination of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the percentage of beating the wrap combined to make a 30 year theoretical sentence a very large gun to the head of a federal defendant. And so they blinked, ran to the United States Attorney’s office and started vomiting whatever information they possessed in the hope of saving their sorry lives. It was pathetic, and I can picture AUSA and agents chuckling as each sad, broken defendant was removed from the conference room in cuffs.
This is important,so I’ll say this again: Neither prosecutor nor agent would believe defendant scum-of-the-earth if he told them the time of day, but the second he turns into Confidential Informant, his every utterance is as true and perfect as if spoken by the Pope. It’s not magic. Its self-interest.
And so the split between snitches and defendants developed, with snitches quickly becoming the predominant breed. In the scheme of honor amongst criminals (or anyone else for that matter), the snitch was the bottom of the pyramid.
Mark Bennett speaks of representing those defendants who, despite the availability of the easy route that involves merely the sacrifice of one’s soul, chose not to give up their brothers, and mothers, and friends, but to stand and fight. These defendants test the government. Through their fortitude, the conduct of the government is tested. Because of these fights, the Constitution is defended.
It is not that these are necessarily good people. They may well be heinous criminals. But without them, there would be no one to challenge unlawful searches, false confessions, governmental misconduct. Without the stand-up client, law enforcement would have free rein to run roughshod over all of us.
There is no great skill involved in representing a snitch. It’s a baby-sitting job, helping government prosecutors to get the story they want in the way they want it. For self-loathing criminal defense lawyers, it may make them feel that they are ridding society of criminals, which suits their inclinations better than defending the accused. For others, it’s merely the mechanism by which their client gets less time, trading what little integrity they might have for the hope of a few months off the tail end of their sentence.
So when Mark wrote of a better class of client, it was about those clients who, despite all the wrong they may have done in their lives, decided that it was better to go down as an honest criminal than to sell the only thing they had left for 30 pieces of silver. Someday, the snitch apparatus upon which the government so conveniently relies will fall out of favor and will be seen as the blight on our system of justice that it is. Then, those lawyers, like Mark Bennett (and like me), who rejected the path to the government’s door will be better understood as the ones who stood firm for the American system of criminal justice, and who refused to facilitate the death of the Constitution.
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As Pleader said in a comment to another of your posts, “Give me my honest cons anyday. . . ”
Amen, brother. While the youngsters may not get it, we do.