The job of a defense attorney is to use all of his or her skill to get their client acquitted. It is NOT to stand in front of a judge and demand that the entire legal structure of Western law — a unanimous verdict by a jury of one’s peers — be trashed because they didn’t like the outcome.
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John Adams defended the British soldiers, not because He believed they were innocent. “A lawyer and political activist prior to the Revolution, Adams was devoted to the right to counsel and presumption of innocence. “ “When Adams made his famed argument regarding jury decisions: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”. ” We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it’s of more… Read more »
1: I think the defence lawyer should, at minmum, be disbarred. Possible jury tampering, and incompetant or aggradising by asking Trump to pardon someone he xould not. Incompetant if he didnt know or he did and just wanted publicity and sounding good.
2. Sending the husband away, and then mehodocally killing the children does’nt seem like confusion, unconttrollabke actions to me, but deliberatte planning.
Post partum psycosis or not, it seems controlled action. Otherwise, she would have tried it, husband preaent or not.
This shows up in Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers.
This POS defense attorney isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom of the real problem. The real problem is the loss of respect for our institutions and standards due to the failure to teach them in the education process. I learned in school that the institutions devised by our forebears resulted in the most free, most prosperous, most moral and most open society in the history of mankind. I was not just told this is so, it was clearly demonstrated WHY this is so. That is real teaching not mere telling. This lesson had such a profound effect that I was… Read more »
Thanks for finding a fresh angle on a grossly oversaturated story.
And am I the only one getting a vibe from Reddington that he would have been a natural as part of OJ’s legal team?
As a physician, I’m loathe to say that depression and pharmaceutical side effects couldn’t have led this woman to be a child-killer. As a human with critical thinking skills, the probability that her murders were premeditated and calculated was high. While I feel she killed her children, the whole “beyond a shadow of a doubt” would be a high bar for me.
Then it’s a good thing “beyond a shadow of a doubt” isn’t the applicable standard. The standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt”. There’s a huge gap between unquestionable certainty and making a judgement call regarding what is reasonable and what is not. Precise language and precise thinking are each other’s servants. Muddy thinking produces cloudy results. The question in this trial was not “Was she mentally disturbed at the time she premeditatedly with malice aforethought plotted, schemed and carried out the murder of her own children?” Of course she was. ANYONE WHO KILLS ANYONE WITHOUT MORAL AND LEGAL JUSTIFICATION IS… Read more »
Have to agree.
I read a column that stated that 3 of the jurors are nurses and talked about treating mentally incompetent patients to their fellow jurors. How did they even get selected for this jury? Heck, I can remember being excused from selection because I had experience dealing with the subject of the trial. So, those nurses should have been “de-selected” because of their professional experience with mental patients.
I feel as disgusted about the media’s constant attention to this case as the panel. However, like a train wreck, I couldn’t turn away because it was on every channel all the time. But I have one question I expected to hear that I did not. HOW did this attorney even know there was a jury issue that would derail his desired verdict? It is vitally important there be no communication between the jury and either the defense or the prosecution. Otherwise, this brings up the question of jury tampering. There is no excuse for this, and I believe the… Read more »
Yes, Fonda ended up turning the jurors (with help) one by one to acknowledge that there was reasonable doubt. The original is one of my favorite films. Saw an amateur stage production as well.
During the Wakefield Tech case with McDermott, Reddington was less than stellar on the defense.