That doesn’t make sense. Morality implies a choice. Necessity implies a lack of choice.
When people say “a necessary evil”, they usually mean “a very convenient evil.”
We’re not talking about a public defender here, he is not under any legal obligation of the law to provide the most effective defense or a defense at all. Maybe a lawyer could weigh in on this? He also had the option to not take the case, and even if he was a public defender, I’m pretty sure he would still have the option to recuse himself from the case. At the very least he had the option to recuse himself of semantic bullshit at sentencing:
The trial was over. All those date rapists have a new ace up their legal sleeve, I guess. Your petty distinction between what he believes and knows to be true is bullshit. I guess lying through your teeth is ok as long as no one can catch you. Or maybe he really did believe she didn’t feel any pain because she was just a slut. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse and I don’t really care. Just doing his job isn’t a defense. That’s the banality of evil.
If the prosecution didn’t make its case beyond a reasonable doubt, they can appeal.
A lawyer’s job is to provide the best legal counsel they can, not leave their morality at home.*
*Edit: And that’s true of anyone.
Ah… so people who we view as scum are entitled to defense, just not particularly good defense. Certainly not high class defense. After all, in this great system of ours, they’re innocent until proven guilty as long as the rest of us don’t just know they’re guilty. If we do, it’s pretty damned immoral of some high power lawyer to make offensive arguments about their innocence. I mean, it’s just downright clear that they’re guilty already anyway, so any defense offered by a high-price lawyer hired to defend those people after that point is complicit acceptance of what their client did. Hell, he probably would’ve been cheering on the gang rape if he’d been there, right?
A lawyer’s job is to provide the best legal counsel they can, not leave their morality at home.
Yeah… those fucking lawyers and their blind justice bullshit. What’s next? Upholding those goddamn baby-killing laws simply because some asshole in the supreme court didn’t know what was moral? Or maybe that fucking stupid piece of paper they put under glass up there with all those stupid words on it that get in the way of keeping everyone safe? (I know, I know, those are judges, and it’s okay for judges to be blindly amoral when it comes to law, but not the filthy lawyers!)
I guess since I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for this guy to use whatever shitty defense he deems reasonable (without, y’know, breaking the actual, written-down-in-code, ethical conventions of being a lawyer), I’m all for date rape too? How wide would you like that swathe you paint to be, sir?
As I said at the start, I’m perfectly happy with morality being left out of the court room. Yours, mine, and the other guy’s. If we have enough of a consensus that something is morally wrong (like, say, gang-raping an unconscious 16 year old) then we ought to make it a goddamn law, eh?
I am pretty sure this thread is in the wrong forum as it does not have pictures of PVG or circumcisions.
Eh? Not looking to get into a protracted argument here, but I simply thought that while mouselock had a valid point about the legal system, it doesn’t mean that we can’t criticize the dad for behaving in an immoral manner.
Or an example, it’s necessary for a fair and good legal system to have presumption of innocence and to force the accuser to bear the burden of proving his case, rather than the inverse, even if in some cases, it results in scum getting away a crime, an immoral outcome.
Hey, Flowers, is being a defense lawyer an inherently immoral career choice?
Dude. I’m not saying they were not entitled to a defense or legal counsel. Stokke should save some of his moral outrage for himself at work and focus some of that energy for their appeal instead demeaning the suffering of that poor girl.
Yeah… those fucking lawyers and their blind justice bullshit. What’s next? Upholding those goddamn baby-killing laws simply because some asshole in the supreme court didn’t know what was moral? Or maybe that fucking stupid piece of paper they put under glass up there with all those stupid words on it that get in the way of keeping everyone safe? (I know, I know, those are judges, and it’s okay for judges to be blindly amoral when it comes to law, but not the filthy lawyers!)
Yeah. There was a lot of blind justice going on in and around that case, yes sirreee. He sounded exactly like blind justice. I’m sure she would say the same exact thing during sentencing.
I guess since I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing for this guy to use whatever shitty defense he deems reasonable (without, y’know, breaking the actual, written-down-in-code, ethical conventions of being a lawyer), I’m all for date rape too? How wide would you like that swathe you paint to be, sir?
If you’re telling me date rapists that drug their victims can not also say, “She didn’t feel a thing. There was no pain, har har,” you’re the one that has a screw loose. That isn’t only an unjustified excuse for lower time, but it’s insulting to the victim. The pain of rape does not end with act or even the memory of the act.
As I said at the start, I’m perfectly happy with morality being left out of the court room. Yours, mine, and the other guy’s. If we have enough of a consensus that something is morally wrong (like, say, gang-raping an unconscious 16 year old) then we ought to make it a goddamn law, eh?
I’m all for an individual’s morality not being the arbiter of the law, but they can’t cop out when it comes to their conduct. He is certainly free to make whatever defense or to say what he wants. However, the fact that he is free to do it isn’t itself justification for him doing so or, god forbid, require us to applaud. Statements like his are not on the side of justice, and certainly not blind justice, when he’s so willing to prey on society’s prejudices against sex workers in one case and insult the suffering of a rape victim in another (after it was already over).
It’s funny because I got kicked off a jury for calling a prosecutor on the same kind of semantic poisoning, before the trial even started. I was too pro-defense then and now I’m Mr. Totalitarian–The Scum have no Rights–Man.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree at this point.
If the lawyers want to come in here and kick my ass, which I’m sure they can, let them. If you have something to say, say it. Don’t hide behind a vague threat of someone else’s verbal beat down.
I wonder, is Flowers like Beetlejuice? Flowers, Flowers.
No, he’s more like Bloody Mary, because you have to say it three times while looking into a mirror in your bathroom.
And then he rapes you.
Can’t rape the willing.
The problem here isn’t that he’s a defense lawyer, the problem is that he accuses others of being demeaning. It just doesn’t work when coming from his position.
Now, if he’s so concerned about women being demeaned, then he can work in organisations to change that, maybe even at the same time as working as a lawyer. He doesn’t even have to quit working as a lawyer. What doesn’t work is to hold his daughter up as a madonna.
I hope he now realises that the system he lives and works in is not something his daughter is immune from, and starts working to change that system.
As PVG’s dad, plain and simple, he has a right to be concerned and do what he likes to address that concern.
As a defense attorney, he’s obviously made some questionable arguments in court that would seem to indicate a propensity for winning a case over making any sort of sense or appearing to be a decent human being, but that’s his choice.
The two things can be mutually exclusive. Being an ass doesn’t preclude you from loving your daughter. The irony would be if after all the attention she decided to pursue a career as an internet porn model.
To answer the question, yes, being a defense attorney is an inherently immoral position. This is not to say that we are not utterly self-righteous. Defense attorney is also not the world’s only inherently immoral job. Criminal prosecutors regularly ask for penalties they do not agree with as part of their jobs, and press for advantage in attempts to convict people they know are innocent.
It is, however, a job that at least wears its morally ambiguous nature on its face. I am required by my job to act immorally. I have to not care that a wifebeater will probably do it again if he gets away with it this time. I have to consciously disregard the prospect that a client may be so horrendously dangerous to society that he belongs in state prison while I am arguing for him to go to a halfway house instead of jail. I do it because I value the individual over the group, and I love the people enough to hate what their government does to them. I also promised that I would take the case of whoever walks in, if it’s my area, so I do. I am naturally contentious, so the after the fact justification that my work representing people accused of crimes somehow keeps the government honest and the system working properly works out great for me. Utilitarianism bats in the winning run.
To put it in KOTOR terms, defense attorneys are like Darth Revan and prosecutors are like the Old Sith Empire that Darth Revan becomes evil to fight against. The Supreme Court is the Star Forge, Richard Posner is Jolee Bindo, and the Constitution is like the self repairing Star Maps that lead to the founding fathers/Rakata.
Also, paperwork lightsabers.
Edit To clarify, what Mordrak does not understand is how seriously and viciously amoral police and prosecutors are. They will violate your Constitutional Rights at every pass if given the slightest opportunity. Police will lie to you and threaten to lock up your family in order to get you to confess. Prosecutors will engage in political prosecutions based on trumped up charges. They will try to introduce irrelevant evidence to paint you as a horrible person. Only a powerful Sith Lord stands a chance of defeating the Old Sith Empire. So you best believe we come with the thunder.
The day to day conduct in our jobs is very, very boring. We can almost always reach an agreement based on an agreed set of facts, and then the State will discuss their concerns at sentencing, and the Defense will list some mitigating factors, sometimes, I even state the concerns and the prosecutor states the mitigating factors. But when it’s time for trial, and someone’s freedom is on the line, the claws have to come out.
My little cousin was caught graffiting. Her father asked the investigators if he should call a lawyer. The detective basically threatened him and told him it would move up to a felony charge.
Heh. Sister recommended he still get a lawyer and get the confession retracted for some legal-mumbo reason I didn’t understand.
Everything I learned about the law comes from The Shield!
You have a very odd sense of morality dude.
There is nothing inherently immoral about being a defense attorney. Defense attorneys seem to serve their clients by potentially getting them acquitted of offenses they actually committed but in reality they actually serve the entire society by forcing the justice system to be extremely rigorous.
I’m not saying it always works, and I’m not saying that Stokke isn’t a jerk, but I am saying you’re dead wrong and I wonder if the people you represent always get the best defense if you feel this way.
What’s with everyone calling her PVG? Anyone who is familiar enough with the meme to recognize the acronym for pole vault girl is also going to know her name, Allison Stokke. Or are you guys just scared shitless of her dad and his forum-crawling abilities? Since you started the thread, Rimbo, I’m calling you out. You fucking coward.
I think what he is saying is that the defense should not play on sexist stereotypes that have no place in our society anymore.
Probably something comparable would be to suggest that an attorney in the 1950s South should not defend a murder defendant with the argument that, “That colored boy had it comin’ to him, for looking at the white woman,” even if the defense could work.
Then you seriously and dangerously underestimate my love of evil.
Ummm…it’s quicker and easier than spelling out her whole name? I seem to recall you using acronyms to talk about games in the gaming forum. What’s the difference? I suppose we could use AS, but then we might be talking about her father.