Brian Tannebaum posts that Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, turns 50 today. The lead character, as every criminal defense lawyer knows, is Atticus Finch. He is what we aspire to be. If you need more information about the book, then you probably shouldn’t be reading Simple Justice. It’s not for you.
Many lawyers have tried to model themselves after Atticus Finch. You won’t find a better role model. Even in his imperfections, he’s perfect.
Some lawyers have tried to wrap themselves up in Atticus Finch, as if they are the modern day, real life equivalent. They are either lying to themselves or lying to the rest of us.
To use Atticus Finch, the embodiment of integrity, dedication and humility, in a way that even hints of personal gain is wrong. It contradicts what the character stands for. It demeans the character and the qualities. It’s just terribly wrong.
There are other lawyers, living lawyers, real lawyers, who are certainly worthy of our admiration and serve as great role models. But there is no character that compares with Atticus Finch when it comes to what a criminal defense lawyer should aspire to be.
Thank you, Harper Lee, for creating the character that has guided so many. Happy 50th birthday, To Kill A Mockingbird.
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Thanks for the marketing ideas.
Brian Atticuswitz
http://www.OCatticus,com
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passing.”
Cutting to the chase.
“Gentlemen,” he was saying, “I shall be brief, but I would like to use my remaining time with you to remind you that this case is not a difficult one, it requires no sifting of complicated facts, but it does require you to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendant. “…To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. This case is as simple as black and white.
“The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. …”
I beg to differ. Once Atticus made a deal with the Sheriff not to investigate Boo Radley’s killing of Bob Youll, then the Sheriff had Atticus’ balls in his pocket.
It would be nice to have another Harper Lee novel, wouldn’t it? It’s tough to decide which is my fave TKAM character, but I’d have to say Atticus Finch.
The sheriff directly asked Atticus to let the dead bury the dead because Bob Yewell was indirectly responsible for the homicide of Tom Robinson by agents of the state.
He also directly asked that Boo Radley not be exposed to the public eye because that would have been Boo’s preference. He would have been subjected to community approval, not disapproval, for ridding it of a menace to the community and to the Finch children in particular. They were smaller and weaker than Bob Yewell. He didn’t have the stones to go after a grown man like Atticus.
Some people reject the public eye. Boo was one of them. He stayed inside and away from people under normal circumstances. Anyway, some people just need killin’ would have been the opinion. So the agreement had its logic.
The strong inference in the novel, from the narrator describing the setting and from Mayella’s and Tom’s testimony, is that Bob Yewell was also a menace to his children. I like to think that after the ending, with her mean father gone from her and the younger ones, Mayella in particular may have spread her wings and eventually turned out to amount to something somehow and found fulfillment. The red geraniums appear to represent her attitude. Hope during apparently ceaseless tribulation for something better.
Recollect that Atticus mentioned that Jem had grounds for self-defense. This is a justification standard. But a separate and independant standard is the defense of another. Boo would have been entitled to present his justification defense to a jury. The jury would have voted an acquittal. Isn’t that true?
That is if an indictment were to get past a grand jury. The circumstances would have been a matter of common knowledge — the plain fact that Bob Yewell was out to kill or main those children — and the grand jury would have expected the prosecutor to present them. Grand juries investigate, and they can subpoena anyone they want including in this case the children who were eyewitnesses and who would have had to testify. It would have been no-billed.
But it would have been more trouble for them and their father, unbidden, following on the heels of their earlier trouble. And Atticus wanted to present a defense in public for Jem to protect the boy’s reputation before he understood, which he did instantly once the sheriff mentioned it, that Jem needed no defense.
If Bob Yewell had succeeded in killing one or both of the children he would have hung anyway. Had he succeeded in accomplishing only an assault on the boy, he would have been throwwwnnn into prison. He was trash, underclass. This is explicit in the story. His lifestyle and background made him incapable of reasonng things through to their logical inferences and conclusions.
He would not have gotten away with it but he didn’t think of that. Let the dead bury the dead. Wise.
All of this is completely true and, I agree, most equitable. However, the Sheriff and Atticus, in essence, chose to cover up the matter and, as said, “let the dead bury the dead.”
Now in today’s context, both Atticus and the Sheriff have a secret on the other. So my question is what happens in the future when Atticus is constrained to go after the Sheriff in defense of another client? No one but Atticus(and maybe not even he) would know if he was going light on the Sheriff because they are both compromised.
Nope, you don’t make deals with the devil, no matter how right and true and decent the devil may be at the time and how just the deal because sometime in the future, you will have to return the favor on another client’s sore back.
Respectfully,
A coverup is a lie and a lie is a lie isn’t it? Even though it is the wise thing, the coverup is political isn’t it? The sheriff would have to convince the prosecutor not to prosecute based on his lie that Bob Ewell fell on his knife. They have the discretion not to prosecute and that discretion I am guessing is typically political.
Maybe it’s a deal with the devil but I doubt it. The sheriff had investigated the rape. You know it may be that he waa not very bright and not very brave. He knew that once a white woman made the accusation Tom was a dead man. He knew from Tom’s reputation that he was probably innocent. He did not see to it that a doctor examined Maybelle to establish medically whether a rape had happened. That would be doubting the word of a white lady claiming she had been taken advantage of.
Maybe he thought that it would not make any difference to a white jury anyway. Even so, the sheriff was complicit in Tom’s death, because what he should have done but didn’t was get a doctor in the case to tell the jury, if it got that far, whether in his medical opinion a rape had happened, even though the jury may have disregarded the testimony.
Atticus did not go after the sheriff with hammer and tongs during cross-examination for running a incomplete investigation. He was very easy on him but he used the gap in the evidence during summation.
And in the story these are men in their 50s who had known each other since childhood and the inference (to me) is that they understand each other implicitly. So your theory would be that they have compromised one another already in criminal cases throughout their working lives. But in this case, it is a deal with not with the devil — the devil seeks to divide people from one another, not unify them — but instead with a flawed and possibly contrite person making a wise offer.