Fifteen minutes or so after I hit the play button on Ken Lammer’s CLTV #27 (the one where he’s wearing a lavender shirt at the beginning, and swills a beer by the end), I took a look at a young prosecutor’s blawg that Ken favors. This particular blawg is often mentioned by the Star and Host of CLTV, but I hesitate to look because it presents one huge problem, it has no actual name.
The latest title appears to be Ubjeckshin, Home of Speezy Story Time. I guess prosecutors feel no need for branding, which is understandable.
Ken raised my consciousness to Speezy’s latest post about why he hates prosecuting assault cases. Aside from some issues he has with what constitutes an “assault”, which I leave alone since I don’t know the laws in his jurisdiction, his rant is directed toward the true bane of a prosecutor’s existence: The Victim.
The first category of victims follows a very predictable pattern. Defendant gets angry with Victim, and then Victim gets scared. Victim calls 911. Cops show up, and Victim suddenly changes their mind. Defendant gets arrested anyway, gets thrown in jail, gets charged, and becomes my problem. Victim comes to me and says they do not want to press charges, because Defendant is a good person and they just overreacted (or some other lame excuse).
There you go. Angry = crime. Not so angry = waste of perfectly good prosecutorial time. Hello? Don’t you victims know that he’s got better things to do than listen to you change your mind? He’s got criminals to put in jail who commit real crimes, and here you are sucking up valuable resources that could be better spent nailing loiterers to the wall. At least with loiterers, there’s no flipping victim to get all wiggly on him.
But this isn’t the victim that really galls him. This one is:
The other set of victims usually start frothing at the mouth the moment you initiate prosecution of their case. They hound you constantly, trying to interject “important information” every step of the way. And the moment you tell them that their “information” is either crap, or otherwise unusable (which it almost always is), they get pissed at you. Of course, it is obviously my fault that the rules of evidence and criminal procedure are the way that they are, and shame on me for not changing them specifically for this case…due process be damned! What is even better, though, is that they insist on trial no matter what…alternative resolutions simply are not acceptable, and some even consider them a violation of their “victims’ rights.”
Don’t you just HATE THAT! People getting all angry and demanding and irrational. They are SOOOO annoying!
They call you every ten minutes with some new whine or complaint, or just to revisit whatever angst they shared the day before, relishing the moment as they roll it over again and again in their mind.
Share the hatred. Join in the anger. Something has to be different, and you have to make it different. You are the problem because you are supposed to be the solution. AAaaarrrggghhh (not the pirate aarrgghh, but the frustrated prosecutor one).
Welcome to the law. We all agree that the practice of law would be so much more fun but for the clients. So the victim isn’t really your client, but they don’t know that. They think you work for them. I mean really, just because they pay your salary (of course, most don’t actually pay taxes, so they really don’t, but they think they do and they say it anyway).
Dealing with the human side of the law frustrates everyone. Some clients are wonderful. Cooperative and appreciative, they work with us to maximize our ability to serve them and fulfill their goals. Most don’t. Some are insane. Some cannot get a grip on their emotions, and while they don’t mean to drive us nuts or take up every waking moment of our time to the preclusion of actually performing the legal work we’re supposed to be doing, they do. Some we can manage to handle; Others can’t be controlled.
When you are first starting out in the law, your ability and willingness to tolerate the vicissitudes of human beings is limited. You are impatient, easily frustrated and intolerant. It gets worse from there. If you can’t deal with it as a prosecutor, where your livelihood doesn’t depend upon the love and admiration of these terrible victims, you’re really going to hate it if you ever leave the dark side and become a criminal defense lawyer.
For better or worse, these are THE PEOPLE that the Constitution speaks about. And they aren’t going to change.
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A major challenge in trials is the emotional state of the “victims” and the alleged violator of the law. Justice is vital, however victims never claim their own responsibility for a crime committed and every defendant has no idea how they could be accused. Providing a fair and honest defense often has to do with the attorney’s relationship with their client, this way he/she never has to come up against completely unexpected bits of information. The more level-headed, honest and up-front a defendant or victim is, the easier it is to have a fair and just trial.
Excellant article. Those of us in the software business sometimes have a similar (though much less emotional) relationship with our clients. Unless you’re being hired to assist someone who does the same thing you do—another lawyer, another developer—it’s an important part of the concept that your clients are hiring you because they don’t know how to handle the situation themselves. If you can’t accept that reality, you’re going to have a hard time.
Don’t even talk to me about representing other lawyers. They’re in a class by themselves.
Well, yeah.
This is a pervasive element in any profession that necessitates dealing directly with people, whether they are called “clients” or “customers.”
I’m only a poor college student working grocery/retail, but I’m damn good at my job. Simply put, some customers are great, and some are dipshits.
Thus is life.
I would imagine that there is a great deal of similarity between being a prosecutor and a grocery clerk.
Um . . . Sorry sir, but this little yellow get-out-of-jail-free coupon is not redeemable in Virginia. Those are only good at Parker-Brothers supermarkets.
Judge John Gleeson’s Moral Compass
Criminal defense lawyers don’t always have kind words for prosecutors.