| Yes, there will be fewer to take their place, since new lawyers will have
no
| desire to go to jail if they are no longer protected by attorney
privilege.
nathan, i don't know whether to characterize your comment as naive or idealistic. i believe labels are misleading and intellectually dishonest so i won't do either.
let me just say, there are always those who will take whatever chance is necessary for a profit. like water filling a hole in a dike, the gap will be filled. there is no guarantee that anyone is going to jail. there are always those willing, ready and able to take the risks. otherwise corruption and crime would not be flourishing throughout our society. the threat of jail isn't a viable deterent since it seem largely to apply to crimes other than white collar, as our jail population shows. and to political crimes as you surely must know.
| As to lawyers knowing where the line is between legal and illegal--
| sometimes they know it, but the reason we have juries is specifically so
| that lawyers are NOT the ones ultimately drawing the line.
i fail to see what juries have to do with it. i'm a firm believer in the jury system, largely because i would never put my case in the hands of a judge to decide. but let's be honest. juries are strongly influenced by the spin and disinformation they receive from judges. juries generally have no legal knowledge. judges determine what these alleged "triers of fact" get to hear and not hear. they determine who testifies, how the testimony will be presented, what evidence the jury will see and hear, and so forth. the supposition that juries are triers of fact is purely a legal fiction. the jury system is as manipulated and manipulatable and the grand jury system, which is an utter disgrace.
you know as well as i do that for decades the DAs have banded together to get judges who are "fair and balanced" to coin a phrase, who give even the slightest appearance of being sympathetic to defendants, banned from hearing criminal trials. and they've met with great success. the judiciary is heavily weighted toward the "conservative." sure, judges don't like mandatory sentencing. but that's not enough. they need to dislike a lot more about the system they work in before they become truly objective. they are decidedly miscast as experts on the law as any good trial lawyer knows.
judges are lawyers. lawyers, not juries, are the ones ultimately drawing the line, as usual. that's one of the core defects of the legal system.
| Doug may want to free Martha, but I trust twelve non-lawyers to judge the
| facts and decide unanimously she did something wrong. Similarly, I'm
happy
| to let juries examine the evidence and decide when lawyers step over the
| line from offering advice to engaging in active criminal activity as a
| partner in crime.
you'll have to take that up with doug.
i trust 12 non-lawyers to judge based on the facts if they are ever allowed to hear and see the facts. this trust is misplaced since juries make mistakes. but over all, when given the facts, they do well.
the fact is, they will very lilkely never see and hear the facts if the legal system -- run, controlled, dominated, manipulated, subverted by lawyers -- holds true to form. there is no reason to suppose it will not hold true to form.
| So to paraphrase, indict all the lawyers, and let the juries sort it out.
| Nathan Newman
it is blatantly foolish to assume that after years of corruption the legal system will sort itself out for this one trial. one with your intelligence and background should know this, move out of your fool's paradise and do something about it so in the future there might be some hope the misnamed "criminal justice system" might provide justice to somebody somewhere.
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "R" <rhisiart at charter.net>
i'm sure we can all rest easy now, nathan. those evil corporate lawyers are finally taken down, thanks to god, and there will be none to take their places. right?
being an attorney gives one the skill to know where the line between legal and illegal is drawn, and to know when and where it can be crossed, and exactly how to come as close to it as possible. how does one distinguish who's who among all that action?
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Newman" <nathanne at nathannewman.org> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 8:26 AM Subject: Lawyers Should be Indicted (Re: [lbo-talk] Doug Henwood profile
Let's distinguish between two kinds of lawyers-- those who come in after a crime is commited to defend a person, and those who actively advise clients on how to effectively break the law and use the lawyer-client privilege to hide incriminating actions and documents.
Yes, there have been a number of indictments focusing on the latter set of lawyers, but to merely call them "defense attorneys" is wrong. Many of them have actively assisted fraud and financial robbery of investors and the public at Enron, in Medicare scams, in tax avoidance schemes, and so on.
I'm all for them being indicted if they actively participate in illegal crimes. Being a lawyer shouldn't give you immunity when you participate in criminal activity and, worse, the attorney-client privilege shouldn't be used to hide illegal activity. Remember, decades of tobacco research that showed deliberate attempts to addict children were hidden under "work product" rules, until Florida litigation finally dragged it out into the open.
As for Lynne Stewart, she was not indicted for defending an accused terorist, but was indicted under charges of facilitating ongoing terrorist activity. The evidence may be sketchy and the eavesdropping used to collect that evidence wrong, but if she actually did what it is claimed she did -- facilitate the delivery of a message directing terrorist attacks -- there is no reason she shouldn't be indicted. But don't go from attacking bad evidence to making a broader argument that lawyers should be immune from prosecution if they facilitate illegal activity. Thank god the corporate lawyers are finally be taken down-- they are some of the worst criminals out there, since they are the masterminds of most criminal corporate activity.
Nathan Newman
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
Michael Perelman wrote:
>Lynne Stewart
There's a good piece in the current ish of Reason (not on web) on the Justice Dept's attempts to criminalize being a defense attorney. It's not just Stewart they're after - it's an entire pattern. Of course the Stewart prosecution is politically scarier. She's not being charged under the PATRIOT Act, because her alleged offenses were committed before that law was passed. Under the PATRIOT Act, the very defense of an accused "terrorist" could itself be prosecuted as terrorism.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk