Should Lawyers Work Hard to Defend a Client They Think is Guilty?
In many dramas, the criminal defense attorney is always depicted as an evil and acquisitive person who can turn black into white and help the rich get rid of their crimes. Whether lawyers should defend criminals has been brought up for discussion whenever there is a terrifying social incident. People generally regard criminal defense lawyers as “devil’s advocate”; however, they are actually one of the crucial characters of a sound judicial system. Lawyers should work hard to defend clients they think are guilty based on the constitution and their professional ethics.
One of the primary reasons is that the constitution guarantees every citizen’s right to have a fair trial. It is a prevalent concept in every democracy in the world: even though people committed crimes and violated others' physical or financial rights, they are still protected by the constitution. According to Constitution of Taiwan (Article 16), “The people shall have the right of presenting petitions, lodging complaints, or instituting legal proceedings”, and the legal proceedings mean the right to file lawsuits and also receive a fair judgment. In some criminal cases, when the defendant is underprivileged and cannot afford a lawyer, the country has to assign a public defender to provide legal assistance to fulfill the unbiased judicial proceedings written in the constitution. The constitution, the foundation of all the other laws and the protection of citizens’ freedom and rights, should be strictly followed under any circumstances so that we can legitimately punish the criminals by law.
Second, lawyers should stick to their professional ethics. When it comes to the question, “Why do lawyers defend criminals?”, people always use the analogy between doctors and lawyers. That is, doctors should accept every patient even if they are criminals, and so do lawyers. It is human nature to penalize the evil-doers; however, a lawyer’s work is not to decide whether the client is guilty or not. Their job is to help their clients grasp the complicated judicial process, protect their rights, make sure they do not get excessive sentences, or even educate the society about an accurate attitude toward criminal defense attorneys. Leon Huang (黃致豪) is renowned as the defense lawyer of many major homicide cases in Taiwan, like Tzeng Jai (鄭捷) and Wang Jing Yu (王景玉). In his TED talk (2018), he shared that he once frankly told Tzeng Jai that he was highly likely to be sentenced to capital punishment, but even so, he still wanted to go to great lengths to experiment if our society and judicial system could perceive this kind of case with a more impartial and rational perspective. Therefore, defense lawyers should put their own judgment aside and follow the ethical duty to speak for their clients.
Many people criticize that it is sinful for lawyers to help defendants get away with the penalty by claiming they have a psychiatric disorder. Some even think that criminals do not deserve a defense, and they resent those attorneys who speak for them. However, a defense attorney’s work is to defend their clients, not to conceal their crimes. They counter the flaws of the prosecutor’s statements due to the principle of presumption of innocence, which means every person should be presumed innocent until they are proven guilty. This principle ensures the judgment is not biased and reduces the incidence of miscarriage of justice. Also, they need to make sure that their clients get proportionate punishment for crimes; therefore, conducting a psychiatric assessment is one of the means to protect the defendants’ rights. To identify malingering is tremendously arduous; therefore, the psychiatric assessment process is extremely rigorous. There were many notorious criminals failing to deceive the psychiatrists in history. For instance, Serial killer Kenneth Bianchi feigned dissociative identity disorder but was sentenced to life imprisonment eventually. According to research conducted by four experts in psychology, Edens, Otto, Guy, and Buffington (2001), about 90% of the malingerers can be successfully identified. As a result, the psychiatric assessment should not be regarded as an excuse; instead, it is a defense lawyer’s tool of fair sentences.
In conclusion, the criminal defense attorney is absolutely necessary under the protection of the constitution and the fulfillment of their ethical duties. The solutions to fair judgment should lie in refining the psychiatric assessment system, or perfecting the social welfare system and going to the root to reduce the incidence of crime rather than removing defense lawyers. After all, true justice can only be fulfilled by a sound judicial system.
Reference:
Constitution of Taiwan, Article 16 (1947)
https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=A0000001
黃致豪 (2018) 死刑辯護教我的事
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLRQ5jdayXI&t=495s
Edens, J. F., Otto, R. K., Guy, L. L., & Buffington, J. K. (2001) Factors Differentiating Successful Versus Unsuccessful Malingerers
