Every once in a while, a defendant in search of a lawyer comes in to talk and asks the question, “what guarantee can you give me?” This may be out of concern that he’s getting his money’s worth, just as one would ask about the guarantee for a dishwasher. Sometimes, however, they are really asking a very different question: “Who are you going to ‘reach’ with my money to assure my freedom?”
There’s a belief that this whole criminal justice system is a stacked game, a scam, where money talks and somebody walks. Judges, prosecutors and witnesses get bribed, and the smart defendant waves and smiles as he walks happily out of the courthouse. Stories like this feed this lie.
Clifford Minor, a former Essex County, N.J., prosecutor and Newark chief judge, has been indicted on charges of accepting a $3,500 bribe for arranging a false confession in a gun possession case, federal officials announced on Thursday.
Minor, 67, who runs a criminal defense practice in Newark, was part of a plan to have one man serve as the “fall guy” for another, officials said.
Minor was also a Newark police officer beforehand. And now he’s a defendant, playing essentially every possible role in the system other than court clerk. It appears that Minor was never exactly a straight shooter.
Minor was a controversial figure in Essex County both before and after becoming Essex County prosecutor in 1992. When Gov. Jim Florio nominated him, the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Judicial and County Prosecutor Appointments Committee refused to give him a “qualified” rating, partly because of a lack of trial experience. The committee reconsidered and Minor was appointed. He served as prosecutor for a five-year term, ending a month early in 1997.
In 1998, a state attorney general audit showed that Minor had distributed $200,000 from the state’s asset forfeiture program to community groups, businesses and churches — largely to assist urban youths — rather than the city or the police department and that he used $2,300 for staff golf outings from July 1992 to November 1997.
None of this, however, led inexorably to the conclusion that as a criminal defense lawyer, Minor would be party to bribing a witness, though it calls into question the sort of person who manages to wend his way into positions of relative power.
Like television fiction that teaches people that cops have some magical sense that allows them to know who is guilty in the absence of evidence, or to tell when someone is lying because of a twitch in their upper left cheek, this story gives the impression that criminal defense is dirty business. It’s not.
The problem is that a defendant, inclined toward finding a lawyer with the juice to make a solid case disappear, will believe this is how it’s done. When the answer to the question is that their legal fee goes toward “the time and hard work of defending them” against the accusation, they lose interest fast. The answer of “hard work” answer doesn’t interest them in the slightest, because they believe that you’re just not the right lawyer, the one with the connections to the judge that can fix all problems with a brown paper bag filled with green.
Every now and then, a story of a judge, prosecutor or witness looking for, or willing to accept, a bribe appears. In my time in the trenches, no judge or prosecutor has ever suggested any such possibility. Not even close. Nor has any fellow defense lawyer told drunken stories of how he took care of things in that fashion. Not a whisper.
The closest it’s ever come are stories of lawyers playing defendants by telling them they would, and could, do so, and getting both the case, as well as a bag filled with extra cash, out of the deal. No, they never bribed anyone and would make up some story about getting burned or some intervening disaster to cover their inability to perform, with the defendant none the wiser. They scammed their client by playing on their belief that the system was dirty. It wasn’t the system at fault, but the lawyer and client.
Bribing witnesses is another matter. Over the years, many a defendant has suggested that the case could be fixed by a cash infusion to a witness. Not a few witnesses have made it known that they would be happy to change their story for a price. Some defendants have offered up others, willing to do some time for the right price, ready to confess to the crime. Variations on this theme are fairly common.
No reputable criminal defense lawyer would ever become involved in any scheme of this sort. It’s insane. It’s wrong.
Criminal defense lawyers are presented with myriad opportunities to do wrong. We represent people, some of whom are criminals. They present us with opportunities to be criminals too. It’s a slippery slope, and once we start the slide there is no ledge to stop our fall to the bottom. We defend criminals. We do not do what our clients do. We are not criminals. As much as our clients may not always have a firm appreciation of right and wrong, they generally expect their lawyer to be a person of higher integrity than they are.
From a pragmatic perspective, it’s just foolish to think that lawyers can play in the gutter and get away with it. Our clients may need us for a brief period of time, but they don’t love us. When lawyers play dirty, clients will give us up to save their own skin in a flash. Given what we do, we’re targets from the outset, and most cops and prosecutors would like nothing better than to bag a dirty criminal defense lawyer.
There have been times when I’ve been asked by newly-minted criminal defense lawyers about such things. Almost to a person, they were on their way out the door of the district attorney’s office and seeking to establish themselves in a new practice. These were stories, tall tales, they brought with them from their prosecutor days, that criminal defense lawyers were dirty, as much criminals as the people they represented. Bizarrely, as they left behind their self-righteousness as prosecutors, they believed that they were about to join the dirty team and had no particular qualms. Indeed, they chose to take the dirty lawyer route as the next step in their career.
When told that “no, we don’t do that,” they would be shocked and amazed. I’ve long believed that if anyone was inclined to go south, it was the former prosecutor who was schooled in the myth that criminal defense lawyers were criminal lawyers. No legal aid lawyer ever suggested such a thing.
Despite the fact that the criminal defense lawyers who I’ve worked with, drank with, loved, hated and known over the years have often been flawed human beings, occasionally challenged lawyers, they remain one of the most honorable, well-intended group of people around. They do not commit crimes.
There are, unfortunately, exceptions, but this is not how criminal defense lawyers do their job. And if it is, they deserve to be caught and prosecuted. We are lawyers who defend people accused of crimes. We are not criminals.
Excellent post, Scott.
I practiced law for 27 years and I have in and around Cleveland, and I have known and observed lawyers, judges, and others caught and prosecuted for bribery and corruption. I represented clients at pre-trials where the Big-Law/insurance company guy rubbed my face in front of the judge about the fun he, his firm and the judge had at the firm loge, or event. I’ve been at the Big-Law firm offices for a deposition and passed by the Dining Room which was set in china, crystal and silver for the luncheon with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. When the CJ died this last year, the rush to name courthouses in his honor made me want to puke. As a suspended lawyer, who is going to do 5 months for “attempted tax evasion,” feel free to ascribe my comment to “sour grapes,” but it doesn’t take a whole lot of looking around local news websites and blawgs to understand that “bribery” and gaming the system is more insidious than the passing of cash–although, there’s been a lot of that here in Cleveland.
I don’t wish to be negative, I myself never wanted to be a Bad Lawyer, but I think it’s more than a “slippery slope.” Fundamentally our system is stressful because at least two things are happening simultaneously: a volume of business must be processed speedily; and, several adverse parties want to win which is another way of saying they want something for themselves: money, reputation, return on business investment–mostly self-seeking for ego.
This means, while naked bribery rarely occurs, the systemic corruption is rife.
I hope my post was clear that it addressed criminal law rather than personal injury. Not being a PI lawyer, I offer no views on whatever dirt their might be, though I believe that criminal defense lawyers, as a groups, have far greater integrity than civil lawyers. Of course, that’s a bit self-serving on my part.
…ugh, shoulda read the false start before I post, my apologies.
Maybe things are less corrupt in the venues where you practice Scott, but while my experiences are based primarily in civil and tort law, bribery and corruption abounds here, there, and everywhere. Low-level lawyers who survive by appointment to matters endless attend “fund raisers,” vendors, and bondsmen/women, “experts” likewise fête and feed the judges who act or appoint. It’s a dirty, dirty business and it’s so far down the slope that I sometimes fear there is no-retrieving it. It’s part of what motivated me to write.
If those prospective clients you’re talking about are white-collar businessmen, it’s not hard to understand what they’re thinking. Here in Chicago, I’ve been told that when you need certain kinds of permits and zoning waivers, you should find a lawyer who can give you a firm all-inclusive price, if you know what I mean. Whether true or not (and it certainly has been true in the past, if you believe all those indictments), it’s the common impression of how business gets done in the city. I imagine New York is not much different. No wonder people expect criminal lawyers to offer the same service.
Nope, not what I was talking about at all.
Ah, how many times I’ve heard, “OK, that’s your fee. Now, what’ll it cost for the win?” Or, from the less euphemistic prospective clients, “What’s the extra for the judge?”
Somehow, the folks who ask those questions never end up hiring me.
Me either. But we both know that they end up hiring someone. I sometimes joke that if I was willing to lie to clients, I could be rich, but it’s really not much of a joke.