>jks. Well, thanks, but even the best lawyer can't do much for a lot
>of defendants. The best lawyer I ever saw, now the head of Justice
>Crim Investigation, was defending a tax fraudster, he was awesome,
>it was like watching Baryshnikov dance. His client was convicted,
>there was nothing to be done on that evidence. I suspect he'd
>advised the client to cop a plea, and the client refused. The hard
>fact is -- sorry Bill, this will convince you even more than you
>already believe I am total sell-out -- most criminal defendants are
>guilty, and most of them are obviously guilty. Ask any defense
>lawyer, which is what I am, never mind the prosecutors. We do our
>best, but mainly the best we can do is to plead to a lesser charge.
I accept most criminal defendants are guilty and I have never said you were a total sell-out. Would you please stop putting words in my mouth, I have my work cut out for me defending some of the things I *do* say.
But, outside of the blinkered world of mandatory sentencing, there's more to trials than merely guilt or innocence, there's a whole world of determining how serious the crime was, what the mitigating circumstances are, how sorry the offender is, what are the chances of re-offending, etc. The point is that these should properly be determined in open court, not the back rooms of police and prosecutors.
Mandatory sentencing takes all these decisions out of the courts and allows the police and prosecutors to decide, by deciding what to charge the offender with. It is a perversion of justice.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20021126/14a557f1/attachment.htm>