Convicting the guilty is easy. Convicting the innocent is the real challenge.
There is no doubt in my mind that some prosecutors really believe and own what’s expressed in the title of this post. (Indeed, just today a former deputy prosecutor told me this was a favorite saying of his former boss.) Sort of like a criminal defense attorney who takes extra special pride in the acquittal of a guilty client, it’s all about ego for prosecutors of this ilk. Such prosecutors are themselves psychopaths and criminals of the lowest sort. Like a gung ho professional soldier who loves the killing and destruction of war and doesn’t give a damn about the justice of his cause, they have found a socially-approved outlet for their homicidal impulses. (But unlike the soldier, a prosecutor need not risk being shot at in order to kill. He may be a perfect coward.) How well they must think of themselves, as they self-righteously strut before the jury on behalf of “the State.” I have every confidence that in the world to come they will get what’s coming to them, that every minute of undeserved suffering they’ve visited upon others will be visited upon them. I hope they think of this in their dying moments. How sure will they be then that their works were good? In the meantime, I can only pray that their deep-seated perversion manifests itself in a way that leads to public disgrace and the cessation of their crimes. I have to assume many of them are secret shoplifters, closet consumers of child pornography, sexual harassers, etc.
In other news, this week an Elkhart County jury convicted a black man of attempted murder for chasing down and shooting another man who moments earlier shot and killed his brother.
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This is the third time I’m trying to post this:
Is there less of a duty to defend ‘guilty’ clients than ‘innocent’ ones and do you even have this conversation with yourself ever? Do you take less pride if you think the guy did it, or he got caught red handed and you got the case tossed or a not guilty? I mean, it does say something about your skills so why wouldn’t you take great pride in doing good work? Unless, we should feel badly for doing our jobs.
1Mirriam,
Please let me know if you’re having trouble posting comments. Maybe I need to take a look at my commenting app.
Yes, I questioned my juxtaposition of the prosecutor’s pride in achieving the difficult task of convicting an innocent man with the defense attorney’s pride in achieving the difficult task of getting a guilty client acquitted. I tried to clarify this in my most recent post.
2well that a job for jury nullification if i ever heard one
3