Diddy Arrested

NOVAHEEL13 said:
The defense is trying to humanize him...as for the question of representation I combined my response to you with my response to 05

The one thing I absolutly HATE is when lawyers attack the victims. The rest of the stuff you mention is just legal fluff that every defense attorney does even when their in court.


Wait...what? Isn't post murder rape a legal imposibility? I mean, admittidly it's been a few weeks since I was a 1L taking Crim Law but I don't remember any jurisdicition where the rape statute includes carnal relations with a corpse. Wouldn't that be like desecration of a dead body or something similar?

Am I misremembering? (honestly asking, not trying to be a dick)

As to the subject of your post and krafty's question. I agree with you and your prof (the above notwithstanding). Some do have that line in the sand others don't. I was never really presented with the issue but I don't think I would have an issue with the defense simply because I don't need to know. My job as a defense attorney is to make sure the state proves their case and it isn't just bring BS charges. I'm neither required to call witnesses nor present a different set of facts. I'm also not required to poke holes in or argue against evidence being admitted so as long as the foundation is laid and it doesn't violate other rules of evidence.

A defense can still be ethically proper even if it's just making sure the state does their job.
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You are undoubtedly correct. But for that particular law professor that was not a hair he was willing to split. Fortunately, I never faced such a moral delimma in my own work career. I only had to deal with morally neutral stuff like Superfund sites.
 
05C40 said:
You are undoubtedly correct. But for that particular law professor that was not a hair he was willing to split. Fortunately, I never faced such a moral delimma in my own work career. I only had to deal with morally neutral stuff like Superfund sites.
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Why's that fortunate are your morals fluid? No criticism just curious. I just have always been a victim apparently of my moral conviction?
 
Sorry, I took my question (where it really belonged) over to the wonderful world of Super's legal questions.

I just wanted to point out that I wasn't casting dispersions at anyone. I truly wanted to know what the legal training and ethics are on this. I have intentionally left a whole bunch of money on the table in my business/profession because I refuse to do certain things to improve my business and bottom line, at the expense of others.

But I am in an entirely different field. That is why I asked the question. It is one of the best things about a community like this, we all have different backgrounds and specialties where we can ask others.
 
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SmilingJack said:
Why's that fortunate are your morals fluid? No criticism just curious. I just have always been a victim apparently of my moral conviction?
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I was trying to make a joke. Superfund litigation is all about getting the sites cleaned up, bringing all the responsible parties to the table, and coming up with an equitable allocation of costs. No real moral delimmas in those actions. Once your client gets named in a UAO, that client is all about getting all PRP's at the table.
 
CHAMTRAIN said:
That indictment was a wild read! Crazy that people who have everything are willing to do things that endanger their freedom. So stupid.
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Yeah, it gets off to a crazy start from the first line.

1. For decades SEAN COMBS, a/k/a "Puff Daddy," a/k/a "P Diddy," a/k/a "Diddy," a/k/a "PD," a/k/a "Love," the defendant........
 
05C40 said:
A long time ago, when I was in law school, my criminal law professor addressed the exact question you posed. He said as a starting point that the American system of freedom and justice was dependent on everyone having legal representation when charged with a crime. Not just the chosen few who the legal elite deemed worthy of representation, but everyone.

However, he added, IIRC, "You have to have personal boundaries that are narrow enough so some defendants are not denied representation." He gave himself, who did pro bono work, as an example of the type of absurd thinking that goes into such line drawing. He said that he had once represented, pro bono, a man accused of murdering and raping a woman. He said it wasn't until he had confirmed that the rape occurred after the murder that he agreed to represent the suspect. He said the distinction he drew in that case was absurd and meaningless, but he stressed that these sort of meaningless distinctions were important for maintaining any sort self-respect, which he deemed particularly important for the legal profession. In his case, he refused to represent anyone who had raped a woman while she was alive. He added that he knew there were lawyers who would represent men accused of sexually assaulting women, so his refusal to do so was not denying such men legal counsel.
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No disrespect for your point or your retelling of the professor's story. And, zero disrespect for any defense lawyer who's willing to take on a guilty client charged with a horrible crime. The system requires it.

That said, your professor was lying. No lawyer ever in history is gonna represent someone charged with murder and post-mortem rape for free. That would be potentially 100s of hours of miserable work on behalf of someone who is most likely a monster and who is entitled to court appointed counsel at any rate.

Nor would any defendant with his life on the line want to depend on an unpaid volunteer lawyer.
 
Scientific Mapp said:
No disrespect for your point or your retelling of the professor's story. And, zero disrespect for any defense lawyer who's willing to take on a guilty client charged with a horrible crime. The system requires it.

That said, your professor was lying. No lawyer ever in history is gonna represent someone charged with murder and post-mortem rape for free. That would be potentially 100s of hours of miserable work on behalf of someone who is most likely a monster and who is entitled to court appointed counsel at any rate.

Nor would any defendant with his life on the line want to depend on an unpaid volunteer lawyer.
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I disagree with you. Or maybe we are talking at cross purposes. But, at a minimum, I think you misunderstand or underestimate how many lawyers in private practice take on pro bono cases. Where the money comes from for expert witnesses and such in pro bono cases varies from case to case. But it is an absolute fact that lawyers in private practice actually do take on pro bono cases, where they (or their firms) are not compensated for their time. And yes, there are also lawyers who get appointed to represent clients who cannot afford a lawyer in criminal cases. And these lawyers do get paid from a fund administered by the court system. In private practice, law firms actually do have billing codes that lawyers doing pro bono bill their time to. I never worked in a firm that had an actual mandatory requirement for how many pro bono hours were to be billed annually, but every firm I worked at encouraged lawyers to do pro bono work.

ETA: In the specific case I mentioned involving my law professor, any criminal defendant would be very happy to have someone of his stature as defense counsel.
 
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05C40 said:
I disagree with you. Or maybe we are talking at cross purposes. But, at a minimum, I think you misunderstand or underestimate how many lawyers in private practice take on pro bono cases. Where the money comes from for expert witnesses and such in pro bono cases varies from case to case. But it is an absolute fact that lawyers in private practice actually do take on pro bono cases, where they (or their firms) are not compensated for their time. And yes, there are also lawyers who get appointed to represent clients who cannot afford a lawyer in criminal cases. And these lawyers do get paid from a fund administered by the court system. In private practice, law firms actually do have billing codes that lawyers doing pro bono bill their time to. I never worked in a firm that had an actual mandatory requirement for how many pro bono hours were to be billed annually, but every firm I worked at encouraged lawyers to do pro bono work.

ETA: In the specific case I mentioned involving my law professor, any criminal defendant would be very happy to have someone of his stature as defense counsel.
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Yup! I'm a member of the bar in 5 jurisdictions and I can tell you that each one has a "voluntary" pro bono professional responsibility rule of some kind based in large part on the model rules. VA specifically has a "voluntary" reporting on the dues form that askes 1) how many hours 2) how much have you donated to free legal causes if you don't have the experience yet to handle some of the cases etc... 3) specific reason as to reporting no hours (ie federal or state contractual requirements prohibiting legal work outside of your employment) or 4) refusal to report hours.

In the firm I worked in after leaving the prosecutors office we split the pro bono work between immigration and real estate (what the firm primarily focused on) to get the firm's hours. Each year one person from each section would work the pro bono cases until the suggestive collective hours were met or exceeded. The next year someone else would do the hours. Never the same lawyer twice and no newbs but everyone else was fair game.
 
NOVAHEEL13 said:
Yup! I'm a member of the bar in 5 jurisdictions and I can tell you that each one has a "voluntary" pro bono professional responsibility rule of some kind based in large part on the model rules. VA specifically has a "voluntary" reporting on the dues form that askes 1) how many hours 2) how much have you donated to free legal causes if you don't have the experience yet to handle some of the cases etc... 3) specific reason as to reporting no hours (ie federal or state contractual requirements prohibiting legal work outside of your employment) or 4) refusal to report hours.

In the firm I worked in after leaving the prosecutors office we split the pro bono work between immigration and real estate (what the firm primarily focused on) to get the firm's hours. Each year one person from each section would work the pro bono cases until the suggestive collective hours were met or exceeded. The next year someone else would do the hours. Never the same lawyer twice and no newbs but everyone else was fair game.
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Everyone gets that pro bono work is a real thing. Presumably, you and your firm helped a lot of regular people who couldn't otherwise afford a lawyer and weren't entitled to a free one; and presumably that earned your firm some goodwill in the community.

Similarly, I know some very skilled and well paid carpenters who give a day here and there to building for habitat for humanity.

The earlier claim was that a professor directed his charitable efforts to helping a person he believed to be guilty of murdering, and then corpse-raping, his victim. That would never happen because a) yuck, b) there's no unfulfilled need for a volunteer lawyer; the defendant would definitely have a free public defender or court appointed lawyer anyway; c) the task would, in all likelihood involve a lwop plea or a quite stressful 2-3 week jury trial; d) the task would require some amount of overhead costs and potential liability and/or a future of MARs and other headaches if the guy is convicted; e) the provision of free representation for an a alleged ghoul would not earn any goodwill from the community, unless it's community of rapey zombies.

The habitat equivalent would be if the charitable carpenter selected the most monstrous person in town and built that person an entire house for free, even though the person already had free housing provided by the state.

I'm not disparaging pro bono work in general. I'm saying the idea of taking THAT case pro bono is a weirdo law professor flex.
 
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