When the news broke, it was just a horrible, terrible story about four police officers, sitting in a coffee shop preparing for their daily patrol. Slaughtered. Moments ago in this still-breaking story, reports that the “person of interest” in the murders, Maurice Clemmons, is either cornered or dead.*
Much will be made in the near future, assuming that Clemmons is the shooter, about how Mike Huckabee cut him a break, and how that break ended with four dead cops. This “Willie Horton” redux will be the fodder of political pundits, and won’t be discussed here. It will likely be the basis for a new round of fear-induced sanctions designed to keep people locked up forever and ever, ignoring that this is huge news because of its oddity rather than normalcy.
But it’s always the one-off situations that get American’s twisted, the message never being clear to a fearful and angry public. Perhaps there will be someone commenting here on this aspect, using a mix of words in all caps to prove how emphatic they are. Nutjobs always like to put important words in all caps to make their point. They think it makes them more convincing.
But while most of the media and blawgosphere will deal with these aspects of this horrible situation, I’m going to be more than a bit opportunistic and use this to pursue a collateral point, one that I’ve been harping on lately. Assuming that Clemmons survives to be prosecuted for these murders, he will be represented a lawyer.
There is little known at this moment that militates in the shooter’s favor. There is little that can explain away the murder of these four police officers. Some will be inclined to speculate about what drove Clemmons to fire, but such speculation is a fool’s game. No matter how miserable his upbringing, no matter how hard the trauma to his head, there is no justice to be found in Clemmons’ deed. And yet he will be represented by a lawyer.
Chances are pretty good that the lawyer who finds him or herself defending Clemmons will be reviled, just as Clemmons will be reviled. If the lawyer is smart, he or she will keep his mouth shut and his head low. Nobody wants to hear platitudes uttered over the coffins of the dead cops. Don’t tell me, “but they’re true, they’re true.” That’s the sort of myopia that brings hatred and ridicule down upon us. If criminal defense lawyers can’t grasp their function, how can we expect others to do so?
The time will come for the lawyer to do his job. What the strategy will be, what tactics will work, has yet to be seen. But the criminal defense lawyer will be charged with making the tough decisions and carrying them out. And if there’s a way, a gap, a mistake, a hole, that will enable that lawyer to walk the man who murdered four police officers out of the courtroom, then that’s what he or she must do.
If Clemmons is guilty as sin, if Clemmons’ commission of the crime can be proven, there will be no abstract justice to be found here. Those who need to wrap themselves up in platitudes so that they won’t feel dirty and disgusting will be left to shiver. But a criminal defense lawyer, a real one, will walk into that courtroom, stand beside the man who murdered four cops, and defend him.
In an interesting juxtaposition, Ron Coleman posted about the ugly advertisement by Texas lawyers Lindeman, Alvarado & Frye, Ron wrote:
But the choices made in these ads completely undermines that bona fide prospective, mainly because in the graphic, hyper-realistic and borderline pornographic pictures, the crimes being referred to are really happening.
Guess what, law firm? People who have been wrongfully accused of these acts, or who desperately want the world (including the justice system) to believe the accusation is wrong, want to be represented by the lawyers who only have innocent clients.
Prosecutor and former defense lawyer Ken Lammers says we are noble and do serve justice.
Defense attorneys seek justice. It’s not the straight forward justice that prosecutors enjoy. It’s a more esoteric form. Defense attorneys advocate for short term injustice and in the process they assure societal justice in the longer term. That’s either seeking justice or having it occur as an unintended, collateral consequence.Ignore him. He’s a prosecutor just blowing smoke to make us feel better about ourselves. We’re part of a system of justice, and so what we do is serve justice (in some esoteric way). Obviously, or they wouldn’t let criminal defense lawyers into the courthouse to annoy the government. But if you need to go beyond the generic raison d’être, you’re screwed. Especially if you need to believe that our system produces justice. It’s just a name we call it, because system of incarceration sounds so cynical.
If you feel compelled to ask yourself “why?” do it just once before you decide to take your first criminal case and never ask it again. Almost everyone in the United States of America will agree that Maurice Clemmons is evil and must be punished. At least one person will stand beside him and defend him. That person will be a criminal defense lawyer, because that’s what we do.
*Update: Latest word is that after a 12 hour stand-off, Clemmons was not to be found.
Update 2: Maurice Clemmons has been shot dead. No criminal defense lawyer will stand beside him. The police are certain that he was the shooter. I have no reason to think otherwise. Let’s hope they’re right.
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Well, assuming that he did what it appears that he did, I’m of the opinion that “…Maurice Clemmons is evil and must be punished,” common though it is. That said, even if he did what it appears he did, and he’s not legally insane or it some sort of improbable self-defense situation (which, from the news reports, seems vanishingly unlikely), of course he should get a defense, simply because everybody should.
Sneering at the CDL who ends up representing him would be like sneering at the butcher who turned the bird that was hobbling around into the turkey that I enjoyed over Thanksgiving; just because I didn’t do it (and, frankly, have no desire to harvest domestic turkeys) doesn’t mean I get to sneer at the butcher. Not only will he be represented, but he should.
So much for the obvious, I guess.
Any firm who promoted itself as defending only the innocent would be either out of business or a laughingstock.
A little less obvious, and orthogonal: The Innocence Project/Network. It’s not a legal firm, exactly, and they’re not exactly raking money hand over fist, as I understand it, but it is a bunch of lawyers and others representing folks who they believe are factually innocent, even though they’ve been convicted. And, whatever they are, it’s not a laughingstock.
And that was badly phrased. Natch, if he’s legally insane and/or not guilty by reason of self-defense or because he’s not the killer, he should get a real defense, too.
In English, the word “lawyer” has “law” in it. However, in many foreign languages, a trial lawyer would be caleld an “advocate”.
I think advocate is a better name. As injust as it is for guilty people to walk free, our system is simply not set up to accurately judge people’s guilt in some sort of vaccuum. It is set up, and effectively so, to let the accused defend themselves. If they can’t defend themselves, then they are presumed guilty. However, that doesn’t work if the reason they can’t defend themselves is that they don’t understand the intricacies of the system.
The Innocence Project is nothing like a law firm, nor was it meant to be, which is precisely why it can do what it does.
While I think semantics are for kids, this is directed toward kids, and hence semantics count. Advocate is much better word to describe what we do than lawyer. But even if they called us Trolley Cars, we would still defend.
Yeah, I klutzed that up. (Thanks for the nice words though.) And I do readily acknowledge both that I am not one of you and probably never could be, Scott, but if, God forbid, I needed one of you — whether I had committed the act that I was accused of or not — I’d be calling one of you, depending on one of you and doing my damndest to make one of you look like one of those law firms that defends innocent people only, or at least markets that way.
That’s kind of my point, though. After all, everyone who is the advocacy business knows — criminal or civil — your client is almost never entirely in the right. Not only that, but even if he is in the wrong, your job is to get the best result for him that you can get, ethically. I am not one of those people who looks downs on criminal defense lawyers.
What I am trying to say, however, is that so many people do that I would be surprised if the law firm that did those ads would want to turn off as many of them as were turned off by their graphic, compelling depiction of the real, awful crimes being described and the suggestion that they’re about getting the people who committed them “back on the street.” I say that because as you know, there are ways to “market” directly to criminals and those who know them — mainly in jail. When you cast your advertising net as widely as these guys did, however, you are taking a very distinct PR risk that could affect your firm’s posture in myriad ways beyond attracting the client the ad was meant to target.
Interesting theory. I wonder if anyone would agree with you and want to promote themselves as being lawyers who only represent the innocent. Anyone?
I am just an observer but it seems to me that the process is started with a presumption of innocence
and that works OK if
1) the charges are dismissed
2) there is a bench trial
3) there is a jury trial
However if there is diversion (if that is an option) or plea bargaining the presumption of innocence is not longer operative.
It seems to me that it is OK for any defense lawyer to defend someone they presume are innocent but I think they are on very thin ice if they say they will only defend people they know are innocent.
As in.
When you were looking for an attorney to represent you did anyone turn you down?
I assume that you are trying to respond to Ron Coleman’s comment, but have neglected to use the reply button? Please remember to use it in the future, as this comment standing alone makes no sense.
Its not exactly the same thing, but I’ve seen at least one firm market itself as only representing members of law enforcement in criminal matters. Apparently the market for that sort of thing is big enough. I understood the angle to be that a self-regarded upstanding police officer who is accused of doing a dirtbag thing, would be wary of calling a dirtbag lawyer who regularly represents the types of dirtbags that the righteous police officer locks up for a living, lest he be forced to confront the reality that he himself is a dirtbag who should be locked up, or the reality that not everyone he’s locked up, or every lawyer he’s locked horns with in the past is a dirtbag, shattering his worldview.
I also saw in the obituary of a bigshot former federal prosecutor big firm-type defense lawyer a comment from the deceased to the effect that he only represented innocent clients, and that while the guilty are also entitled to representation, they aren’t entitled to his. I suppose that attitude might be comforting to a potential client who wants to live in denial over whether he might have committed a criminal act. Whether its a good legal strategy is a different story.
Thanks for this post, Scott. It’s been very upsetting out here, and people are shaken. One of the officers down, Tina Griswold, was from Lacey, WA, my neighborhood. Assuming as you say that the shooter survives, he will need at least one person in his corner. I wish his future attorneys well.
The Tacoma News Tribune is the local paper for the story.
Clemmons was, reports say, shot dead by police. The odds are, it seems to me, pretty likely that he was resisting — the report is that gunfire was exchanged — but who is going to credibly investigate?