“Thirty years of experience have led me to believe that our job is in fact similar to the job of the prosecutors, namely, to do justice.”
The quote in the title of this post is from this 2006 article by the then Chair of the Colorado Bar Association Criminal Law Section, Lenny Frieling. I cite the article because it reaches essentially the same conclusion as this blog post by a baby lawyer, which Scott Greenfield mocked here on a blog he calls “Simple Justice.” Scott’s view, you see, is that the duty of a criminal defense attorney is “not to ‘do justice,’ but to defend.” Scott goes so far as to proclaim, here and here, that anybody who doesn’t parrot his view in all its simplicity (me, for instance) shouldn’t be a criminal defense attorney.
Frieling, by contrast, takes a less dogmatic and hardheaded approach: “There also are many experienced and wise defense attorneys who would completely disagree with everything I’m saying. Sometimes I disagree with what I’m saying. I respectfully suggest that my view is helpful and at least should be considered in determining the role of a defense attorney.”
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