I think you are incorrect this time out.
The thread topic seeks to address why the (possibly) innocent man spent 26 years in jail. With all due respect, as thread originator it was for CeiCei, and not for you, to determine the scope of the debate.
Topics often contain inherent questions, regardless of the intentions or interests of the thread creator. And the pivotal issue in this discussion is that a man spent 26 years in jail,
and might well have been unjustly executed, because those with the ability to direct the justice system in a certain direction chose not to. I do not see how you can plausibly argue otherwise.
It is hardly a "distraction" to point out that among those most directly responsible are Hope and Wilson, the killers who (allegedly) had personal knowledge that Logan wasn't the triggerman. Nor would it be irrelevant to note that Logan went to jail with this long sentence as a result of a criminal trial with eyewitness testimony. Wilson's lawyers did not send Logan to jail and it is not upon their authority that he remains there.
When a man who may well be innocent turns out to have spent time in jail, or been executed, for a crime he did not commit, that very statement presupposes the existence of a crime, no? But given that a crime was committed, if it was indeed committed by someone else,
why did he spend that time in jail? Saying, well, someone did the crime, and they're the ones responsible, seems to me to abandon inquiry just at the point when the social consequences get serious. A crime was committed, that's the given, but the fallout from the crime in this case implicates the way the justice system and the professional ethical code of the law profession are structured. Again, I don't see how you can deny that. Saying that Wilson's lawyers did not send Logan to jail is setting up a huge straw man, grydth, surely you recognize that. Who is saying that they sent him to jail? But he
stayed in jail, for 26 years, because of their choices; and he might have been killed by the state, or have been sentenced to death, because of their choices, if they were being consistent. I think most of the people reading this thread understand that point very well.
This is more than a legal nicety or academic point, as Hope and Wilson were the sole individuals who could have waived the legal privilege.... and who could have provided the direct eyewitness testimony that could have freed Logan years ago (assuming Logan is innocent, and assuming the lawyers weren't along on the crime spree). Now, if evidence obtained in violation of privilege faces severe admissibility hurdles in court, how can we fail to discuss that in any debate over what the lawyers should have done?
The admissiblity of evidence in court is a separate issue. The fact is that there were several parties who had knowledge of the severe contraindications to Logan's guilt. Two of these were dyfunctional street thugs. Two were well-educated gentlemen familiar with the law and professionally trained it, who had studied both its theory and application in law school and presumably understood that the point of the law is to serve some normative idea of justice. We do not look to the first pair for ethical decision-making, taking into account the balance of rights on various sides. We look to the second pair, and this is what they chose to do. Their choice was a
necessary condition for Logan's incarceration. It was not sufficient, because someone else had to do the crime that Logan appears to have been incorrectly convicted for, but it was necessary. They were, so to speak,
accomplices in the outcome. I speak figuratively, you understand, but the situations are similar.
And believe me, I'm not looking at this matter as an academic issue.
I strongly disagree with your assertion that there is no reason to devote debate to the likes of Hope and Wilson as they are "worthless sociopaths...who will always be with us,"
Having been both a defense attorney and a prosecutor, I fail to understand how anyone can assess lawyers' actions, and formulate future codes of conduct, without understanding what these lawyers have to deal with. What's more, it certainly is not accurate to generalize all criminal defendants in that group.
But it is a given that we will need a justice system and laws in place just as long as people in a society carry out actions that jeopardize the basic civil pact that provides the basis for that society. From that point of view, people like Hope and Wilson are
givens in any society which has the need for a legal system; if we don't have anyone like them, then we very likely have no need for criminal laws or a criminal court system, period. Your position on Hope/Wilson strikes me as perilously close to answering the question, `What was the cause of the American civil war' with the reply, 'Because Fort Sumpter was fired on by the Confederate military'. What arises here as an issue is a particular way in which certain sanctioned arrangements between legal counsel and client may have the effect of blocking the implementation of justice. That is something that
cannot go undiscussed in a case like this, I believe.
Having done the job, I can say that the defense lawyer does not have the luxury of intellectually dismissing a man. He has the duty to zealously defend the client irregardless of whether he be a "worthless sociopath" to others, a man wrongfully accused, or something in between. That duty, of which the attorney-client privilege is a part, is what these lawyers carried out.
You misunderstand me very seriously here, grydth: I am not saying that the lawyers in question were supposed to regard the two perps in this case as worthless sociopaths. I am saying that what I see as the crucial question this case raises is
predicated on the existence of the two worthless sociopaths in question; it only exists because of their actions, and having acted the way they did, they left this ethical and legal mess for the larger society to sort out. I am talking about the irrelevance of these two worthless sociopaths to questions of what happens when worthless sociopaths not only kill innocent people themselves, but put innocent members of the society they've thereby damaged at risk of being wrongly incarcerated or executed by members of that same society. The criminals, having done what they did, are no longer part of the picture: that there is crucial information that could have led to freedom for a man who, by all appearances, deserved it as much as you or I do. And the problem is how that information was handled by people whose jobs are located within the American justice system. Hope/Wilson's lawyers' attitudes to their own clients have nothing at all to do with what I'm talking about—surely that's evident?
To make a blanket assumption about defendants, to fail to consider background and real life experience, to imagine there can be one code for some and another for the "worthless".... well, it's nice for a classroom. But it won't fly in real life.
Again: regardless of background or real life experience or whatever, certain aspects of the legal profession's code of ethics led an apparently innocent man to stay imprisoned in spite of the fact that those in a position to know better—who themselves were in no way implicated in the crime—chose not to act on that knowledge, and who, by the logic they followed, would not have done so even if the innocent man had been at risk of execution for what could easily have been a capital charge. How am I saying that there is one code for some and a different code for the other? Again, I am simply saying that this whole situation is
based on an action carried out by worthless sociopaths, and talking about them and how rotten what they did was is a way of avoiding the significant issue
for us: is this how the supposedly valid professional arrangements of the legal system are supposed to play out in such cases? What do Hope and Wilson have to do with
that question—a question which cries out to be addressed, given what the facts appear to be?
That's what I'm saying.
) by saying I hate lawyers on one post and then saying we need to bring in more lawyers in another.
