Friday, August 13, 2010

Those poor defense attorneys

I often lament with them, or just for them, when I can see their clients are being difficult.

Have a look at this post from DC defense lawyer Jamison Koehler, collating a bunch of quotations on the subject.

Before we start, there's one I heard this week, client to defense lawyer discussing probation conditions:

"Dude, I don't want to go to rehab. Can't you tell the judge to give me out-house treatment?"

3 comments:

  1. It always says a lot to me about who I'm dealing with when I get the client a probation rec and he asks me to go back and get a jail rec. :-)

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  2. I've seen people get fed up with probation and ask just to serve time instead. how often do you get people making that request, Donald?

    I think it highlights a bigger problem. The trend, rightly, is towards treatment and away from incarceration, but I'm not convinced you can treat people who don't want to get better. Can we do anything but jail those people?!

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  3. Probation doesn't necessarily mean treatment. Generally, the people I know who choose time over probation do so because the time is significantly shorter than probation, and involves less risk, and less fees. They know that if they're even with someone that gets arrested for, lets say, possession, odds are that they will be charged too and because they're on probation are looking at an inordinate amount of jail time considering the crime.

    ReplyDelete

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