August 2004, Page 2
When a defense attorney represents a client he/she knows to be guilty, then by
definition they are being paid to circumvent justice--to allow the guilty to go
unpunished. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it is assumed to be part of
an adversarial process at the heart of our legal system: a concept of ultimate
fairness based solely on evidence and decided by a fair and unbiased judge and/or
jury. Unfortunately, such a system no longer exists in America. The current legal
system is little more than a "lawyering" game.
The problem is that helping the guilty escape punishment is a very lucrative
endeavor. Defense lawyers make so much money, they have political action
committees that routinely give six-and seven-figure contributions to the very judges
hearing their cases on appeal, and to the legislators who fund their opponents--law
enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts themselves. As a result, the State's
ability to prosecute crimes is crippled--at every level--by under-funding. At this
point, it seems the criminals are funding their side of the "adversarial process"
better than the good guys. The entire process is ruled by lawyers. Trial lawyers.
Judge lawyers. And politician lawyers.
Attorneys representing indigent capital murder defendants aren't given enough
money to mount an effective and proper defense. They don't have much of a
chance in the current system. If you are poor, and you are not white, you are
more likely to end up on death row than if you are otherwise. Attorneys
representing the wealthiest clients might have several million dollars at their
disposal, rather than several thousand. On these occasions, there is a profound
advantage to the defendant. I'm so naive to believe that the quality and quantity of
access to the legal system should be the same for the indigent defendant and the
wealthy one. And it can't be that way if you don't pay lawyers to defend indigents,
and if you don't set some rational limits on "lawyering" on behalf of well-funded
defendants.
Without six figures of cash "access," dwm would have never gotten a three-week
trial in the first place. The trial would have been open and shut, and he would be
on death row right now. But he has the "access" in the person of Sherman
"Brother" Powell, and his admirer, Judge Glenn Thompson.
Morgan County, Alabama can't afford to have a second State of Alabama v Daniel
Wade Moore, but Daniel Wade Moore can. He could walk free, as a result.
Not only are the local courts overwhelmed, the Appeals Courts are backed up for
years with mountains of lawyerly paperwork. The Federal Courts, too, are having
the same crisis. To top it off, the Supreme Court threw out two decades of
sentencing guidelines, and with one short document killed more trees than
Weyerhauser. The legal system appears to be well past the point of crisis. It's
more of a state and federal disaster area. The government itself is routinely
violating the law as a result of not being able to afford to enforce its own rules--on
itself, much less on the accused.
It would be unfair to say that the current system exclusively favors criminals. In
truth, the system doesn't favor either criminals or victims. It favors only lawyers,
and defendants with money. The outcome of a legal proceeding seems to depend
more on the amount of money the defense team is paid than anything
else--including the actual evidence in the case. That's because the legal system isn't
about criminals or victims. It's about lawyers. Money. Power. Politics.