Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

Justice vs. The Law

Defend­ing Peo­ple reader “Ryan”, writ­ing at Plain Error, the offi­cial blog of the Inno­cence Project of Florida, responds to my “Law and Jus­tice Explained.” post:

As some­one with the sta­tus just above arm­chair philoso­pher (dis­clo­sure: I will be attend­ing grad­u­ate school for a PhD in phi­los­o­phy in the fall), I have a few words on that one.

The idea that “jus­tice” has no rela­tion­ship to the law – and the poster is very clear that they believe this – is, I think, obvi­ously mis­taken. This is what they say:

1) Jus­tice is a topic that exists in philosophy.

2) Law is what a bunch of mostly long-dead politi­cians thought would get them elected.

3) Never the twain shall meet.

Here are the miss­ing premises.

1) Jus­tice is a topic that exists in philosophy.

2) The pub­lic, with what­ever under­stand­ing of phi­los­o­phy they have, com­bined with their upbring­ing and social mores, have formed con­cepts of jus­tice for themselves.

3) A voter’s sup­port for a politi­cian is pro­por­tional to their belief that the politi­cian is like them, or will enact poli­cies that see their beliefs fulfilled.

4) The more a politician’s osten­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice falls in line with a voter’s the more likely that voter is to sup­port that politi­cian, other things being equal.

5) Politi­cians act in ways they believe will get them elected.

6) Politi­cians mimic what they believe is the pub­lic con­cep­tion of jus­tice when they enact laws because they believe it will get them re-elected.

7) Laws come to resem­ble the pub­lic con­cep­tion of what jus­tice is.

Finally, which should be a premise between my (2) and (3) above: as much as philoso­phers like to think they’ve got it fig­ured out – though they are often quick to point out that they know noth­ing – you might be sur­prised at how much philo­soph­i­cal con­cep­tions of jus­tice are either informed by or in line with pub­lic con­cep­tions.

It’s been a long time since the last phi­los­o­phy course I will con­fess to hav­ing taken. The whole of the intel­lec­tual residue from my for­mal philo­soph­i­cal train­ing is the abil­ity to dis­tin­guish Khan from Kant:

Khan from Star TrekImmanuel Kant

(though I still tend to for­get which of them was respon­si­ble for describ­ing the cat­e­gor­i­cal imper­a­tive, and which for steal­ing the Gen­e­sis Device).

As a philoso­pher, I don’t even rate an arm­chair. To the extent that I com­mit phi­los­o­phy, it’s phi­los­o­phy of the foren­sic “what eter­nal truth, applied to this case, will keep a jury from evis­cer­at­ing my client?” or the prac­ti­cal “how do I under­stand what I per­ceive to be grave injus­tices of the crim­i­nal law with­out sink­ing into despair?” rather than the aca­d­e­mic sort.

I hes­i­tate to ridicule earnest read­ers of Defend­ing Peo­ple … but only briefly.

Does “I will be attend­ing grad­u­ate school for a PhD in phi­los­o­phy in the fall” mean any­thing more than, “I’ve got a BA in some lib­eral arts field, pos­si­bly even phi­los­o­phy”? Is a degree in phi­los­o­phy nec­es­sary to dis­cuss phi­los­o­phy? If so, what does that make Plato? Aris­to­tle? Socrates?

Morons?

Assum­ing that “I will be attend­ing grad­u­ate school for a PhD in phi­los­o­phy in the fall” doesn’t spe­cially qual­ify one as an author­ity on the rela­tion­ship between jus­tice and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, Ryan’s posi­tion will have to stand or fall on its own mer­its. Or lack thereof.

I’ll take his “miss­ing premises” sequen­tially, internet-style. Let’s look at them prac­ti­cally, con­sid­er­ing our expe­ri­ence in the real world:

The pub­lic, with what­ever under­stand­ing of phi­los­o­phy they have, com­bined with their upbring­ing and social mores, have formed con­cepts of jus­tice for themselves.

Most of the pub­lic have had nei­ther the leisure nor the incli­na­tion to give a whole lot of thought to what jus­tice is, beyond a dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion that is use­less in court. The pub­lic con­cep­tion of jus­tice tends to be informed by the hys­te­ria of exag­ger­ated fears, which are fed by the spe­cial inter­ests (which I dis­cuss briefly below) that ben­e­fit from harsher pun­ish­ment. When you entrust jus­tice to the major­ity, you get mob justice.

If jus­tice exists, it’s indi­vid­u­al­ized. What does some­one deserve who com­mits mur­der? Some peo­ple who com­mit mur­der deserve to be com­mended, and some deserve to be hanged. Any one answer to the ques­tion of what pun­ish­ment is mer­ited for a par­tic­u­lar crime is going to be wrong more often than it’s right. To the extent that the pub­lic has formed con­cepts of jus­tice for them­selves, they are coarse—someone who does X deserves Y—and don’t account for the sub­tleties of human behav­ior. This is meataxe jus­tice.

Philo­soph­i­cal con­cep­tions of jus­tice are either informed by or in line with pub­lic con­cep­tions. Jus­tice is treat­ing oth­ers fairly. Jus­tice is giv­ing each per­son their due. Jus­tice is hav­ing what one deserves. It is for philoso­phers to unpack some­what vague notions like these, but they cer­tainly start with premises every­day peo­ple are likely to believe, and often­times end up not very far away.

So jus­tice is hav­ing what one deserves? Seri­ously, that’s the best you can do, Ryan? This is the dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of the word “jus­tice”, which says noth­ing about what jus­tice com­prises, and is entirely use­less in court. What does one deserve? What does the guy who com­mit­ted mur­der deserve? How deeply must we delve into his back­ground in mak­ing that deci­sion? What mit­i­gates and what aggra­vates? Who deserves the noose, and who the medal? Clarence Dar­row believed that there was no way we mor­tals could pos­si­bly have enough infor­ma­tion to answer these ques­tions, and that the best we can do is cling to char­ity and under­stand­ing and mercy.

If the best philoso­phers can do after 2,600 years of phi­los­o­phiz­ing is “jus­tice is treat­ing oth­ers fairly”, then God help us if we’re going to leave it to the aca­d­e­mic philoso­phers to “unpack” these “some­what vague notions” and tell us what jus­tice is.

A voter’s sup­port for a politi­cian is pro­por­tional to their belief that the politi­cian is like them, or will enact poli­cies that see their beliefs fulfilled.

Maybe. The hide-the-ball word here is the first “belief”. Unspo­ken is the addi­tional premise that vot­ers cor­rectly per­ceive politi­cians’ beliefs. This falls in the the realm of psy­chol­ogy but, as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, some politi­cians get elected because of their name or posi­tion on the bal­lot or because of what they say their beliefs are (fam­ily val­ues, any­one?), rather than what the politi­cians will actu­ally do once elected.

The more a politician’s osten­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice falls in line with a voter’s the more likely that voter is to sup­port that politi­cian, other things being equal.

Here the weasel words are “osten­si­ble” and “other things being equal.” Does a politician’s osten­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice nec­es­sar­ily match his true def­i­n­i­tion? Does a def­i­n­i­tion tell us any­thing? Politi­cians’ adver­tis­ing bud­gets being equal? Voter aware­ness being equal?

Politi­cians act in ways they believe will get them elected.

That, at least, is inar­guable. Politi­cians will pre­tend to be what­ever they think they need to pre­tend to be to get elected, and will pan­der to whomever they believe they need to pan­der to to get elected. Here’s a major hole in any “law = jus­tice” argu­ment: even if the vot­ers gave much thought to the ques­tions of jus­tice, the influ­ence of spe­cial inter­est and big money groups on elec­tions is so great that politi­cians effect the ethics of MADD or the prison-industrial com­plex rather than the voters.

Since the spe­cial inter­est and big money groups are spend­ing money to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion at the same time they are spend­ing money to influ­ence politi­cians’ votes, it might appear that politi­cians’ votes are fol­low­ing pub­lic opin­ion, rather than every­thing being led around by the PR people’s highly advanced manip­u­la­tions.

Politi­cians mimic what they believe is the pub­lic con­cep­tion of jus­tice when they enact laws because they believe it will get them re-elected.

If, to turn a buck, I mimic what I believe is the pub­lic con­cep­tion of a bird, am I any closer to tak­ing flight?

Laws come to resem­ble the pub­lic con­cep­tion of what jus­tice is.

This is a non sequitur. Even if each of the pre­vi­ous prin­ci­ples were cor­rect, the most that could be said is that laws come to resem­ble what politi­cians believe is the pub­lic con­cep­tion of jus­tice that will give them the best chance of being reelected.

Smilin’ Jack’s propo­si­tion, of which I approved in my last post on the sub­ject, was that there’s no con­nec­tion between law and jus­tice. By describ­ing the con­nec­tion he sees—law is politi­cians’ mim­icry of their under­stand­ing of the crude beliefs of the pub­lic, enacted for the pur­pose of get­ting the politi­cians reelected—Ryan unin­ten­tion­ally makes the same point.

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This entry was posted by on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under justice, philosophy, politics, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

17 Responses to “Justice vs. The Law”

  1. JGL says:
    28 June 2009 at 9:02 am

    Slight over­re­ac­tion do a dif­fer­ing opin­ion. Don’t ya’ think?

    Reply
  2. John Kindley says:
    28 June 2009 at 2:50 pm

    “Who deserves the noose, and who the medal? Clarence Dar­row believed that there was no way we mor­tals could pos­si­bly have enough infor­ma­tion to answer these ques­tions, and that the best we can do is cling to char­ity and under­stand­ing and mercy.”

    On fur­ther reflec­tion, I may be com­ing around to your point of view — or rather, fur­ther reflec­tion on my own prin­ci­ples and the con­sid­er­a­tions you’ve advanced may be lead­ing me to give a greater and pre­vail­ing weight to a point of view I’ve always appre­ci­ated as hav­ing merit. I cer­tainly sub­scribe to the notion that both indi­vid­u­als and gov­ern­ments should be con­strained by a heavy pre­sump­tion against coer­cion and in favor of lib­erty, and this applies as well to the length and sever­ity of “pun­ish­ments” for crim­i­nal offenses. Every act of coer­cion or vio­lence should be jus­ti­fied by strict necessity.

    Take the case of Tim­o­thy McVeigh. In the pre­vi­ous thread on your blog, I cited and approved Lysander Spooner’s essay “Vices Are Not Crimes.” On this view, by pun­ish­ing vices (such as drug use, pros­ti­tu­tion and gam­bling) as crimes, and vio­lat­ing other nat­ural rights on a reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent basis (Waco being one par­tic­u­larly egre­gious instance of this), the U.S. fed­eral gov­ern­ment is itself the largest crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion on the planet. The tax­a­tion by which it funds its oper­a­tions really and truly is crim­i­nal extor­tion. It is immoral to work for that crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion. That cer­tainly doesn’t mean I approve of McVeigh’s bomb­ing of the fed­eral build­ing in Okla­homa City. I myself, before I knew bet­ter, was an employee of the U.S. Navy for six years fol­low­ing high school grad­u­a­tion. It’s easy to remem­ber my rea­sons for think­ing I was doing some­thing noble in that capac­ity, and one would have hoped that McVeigh, who was also for­mer mil­i­tary, would have had more empa­thy for the vic­tims of his crime (who mis­guid­edly though sin­cerely prob­a­bly thought of them­selves as “pub­lic ser­vants”) before he car­ried it out.

    Indeed, who deserves the noose, and who the medal? If the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War had been lost, its lead­ers would surely have been hanged, as they well under­stood when they signed the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Harry Truman’s bomb­ing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a greater act of ter­ror­ism than McVeigh’s (or for that mat­ter the attack on the World Trade Cen­ter), and its far more numer­ous vic­tims had far less of a con­nec­tion to the intended enemy than the fed­eral employ­ees mur­dered by McVeigh. If McVeigh deserved the noose or the gas cham­ber, then so did Truman.

    I don’t feel sorry for McVeigh, although I don’t believe he should have been exe­cuted. An indi­vid­ual or a group of indi­vid­u­als going to war against “its” gov­ern­ment should be pre­pared to die for his or their con­vic­tions. But in my opin­ion, BTK deserved the death penalty far more than McVeigh, even though McVeigh killed far more vic­tims. Although by no means do I approve of the actions of Scott Roeder, the man who killed George Tiller, and although for prag­matic rea­sons and because of the pre­sump­tion against coer­cion I don’t think abor­tion should be crim­i­nal­ized, I view Roeder as sim­i­larly sit­u­ated to McVeigh. A per­son who inter­vened lethally to defend and save the life of a new­born baby would not only not be pros­e­cuted but would likely be com­mended by the pub­lic and the baby’s par­ents. Again, who deserves the noose, and who the medal?

    The cycle of vio­lence has to stop some­where, and it may as well stop with the State, which as a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion is incom­pe­tent to ren­der jus­tice. Oddly though, if a father killed the man who raped his daugh­ter on his way to the cour­t­house, I’m not sure that the father should be charged with a crime at all, because I’m not sure that the crime of rape doesn’t deserve death (assum­ing there’s no doubt as to guilt). I’d apply the same pre­sump­tion against coer­cion and vio­lence, the same ben­e­fit of the doubt, to the father. There would be no rea­son to think that the father would present a dan­ger in the future to any­one else in society.

    There’s some­thing to be said for Leo Tolstoy’s Chris­t­ian anar­chism and paci­fism as he expressed it in his essay The King­dom of God is Within You. Ulti­mately, how­ever, such extreme paci­fism is not prac­ti­cal and is not moral. We should not stand idly by and do noth­ing to stop or pre­vent a crim­i­nal from harm­ing oth­ers or our­selves. But per­haps, rec­og­niz­ing that only God knows what each of us truly deserves, we should take such a pre­sump­tion against coer­cion and vio­lence as far as we can, as far as is prac­ti­cal and moral. Per­haps inca­pac­i­ta­tion (along with finan­cial resti­tu­tion for harm caused) should be the pri­mary if not the only pur­pose of state-sanctioned crim­i­nal “punishment.”

    Sup­pose we are 99% sure, but only 99% sure, that a defen­dant com­mit­ted a heinous crime (or a series of heinous crimes), and that he is truly and fully cul­pa­ble for that crime (in light of his upbring­ing and genetic psy­cho­log­i­cal makeup, for exam­ple). It would prob­a­bly be impru­dent to set him free based upon that 1% doubt. But that doubt remains. That doubt should inform the “cor­rec­tional” envi­ron­ment, where pris­on­ers should be pro­tected from each other and their oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve and reform them­selves should not be impeded.

    I still believe that cer­tain crimes prob­a­bly deserve death, and that we can be sure enough in par­tic­u­lar instances of a criminal’s guilt and cul­pa­bil­ity to ren­der the impo­si­tion of the death penalty not immoral. Again, death is not the worst that can befall a man. Again, the death penalty has the poten­tial to waken the mon­strous and self-centered crim­i­nal before his death to the enor­mity of his crimes, and to pro­vide a mea­sure of sat­is­fac­tion to the victim’s fam­ily, whose belief that the crim­i­nal deserves to die does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that they are irra­tionally blood­thirsty. I didn’t get worked up by any per­ceived injus­tice in the exe­cu­tion por­trayed in the movie Dead Man Walk­ing. I wouldn’t shed a tear if the BTK killer was exe­cuted. I wouldn’t shed a tear if that man who viciously and bru­tally raped a very young girl and per­ma­nently dam­aged her was exe­cuted, even though he didn’t kill her. (Or has he already been exe­cuted?) I have a hard time get­ting worked up about the death penalty in gen­eral in cases of par­tic­u­larly aggra­vated mur­der, except where it appears that there is some doubt about the guilt of the con­victed or there are sig­nif­i­cant mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances or it is applied dif­fer­ently to dif­fer­ent races. In my opin­ion, there are other things in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem (the incar­cer­a­tion of peo­ple for vic­tim­less crimes, and the judi­cial evis­cer­a­tion of jury nul­li­fi­ca­tion, to name just two promi­nent exam­ples) that are more wor­thy of get­ting worked up about.

    Nev­er­the­less, for the rea­sons you’ve elab­o­rated and the rea­sons I’ve men­tioned above, I think I agree with you that the death penalty just isn’t worth it. We’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off with­out it. We shouldn’t trust the State, a crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion, with ques­tions of life and death. I agree with your para­phrase of Clarence Dar­row, who “believed that there was no way we mor­tals could pos­si­bly have enough infor­ma­tion to answer these ques­tions, and that the best we can do is cling to char­ity and under­stand­ing and mercy.” I’m all for a less bar­baric and less vio­lent and more mer­ci­ful society.

    Reply
    • Mark Bennett says:
      28 June 2009 at 7:29 pm

      Sup­pose we are 99% sure, but only 99% sure, that a defen­dant com­mit­ted a heinous crime (or a series of heinous crimes), and that he is truly and fully cul­pa­ble for that crime (in light of his upbring­ing and genetic psy­cho­log­i­cal makeup, for example).

      Sup­pose that we are 100% sure that a defen­dant com­mit­ted a seri­ous of the most heinous crimes.

      But we are not 100% sure that he is truly and fully cul­pa­ble in light of his upbring­ing and genetic makeup (is there any­thing else?).

      It might be appro­pri­ate for the State to kill him—death could con­ceiv­ably be the only way to keep him from reof­fend­ing. But killing him would be a prac­ti­cal solu­tion: because he needed it, not because he deserved it.

      My posi­tion (in case it wasn’t already clear) is that, at least with the state of sci­ence as it is, we can never be 100% sure that a per­son deserves to die.

      Reply
      • Jeff Gamso says:
        28 June 2009 at 8:43 pm

        I don’t doubt that some peo­ple may deserve to die (though I don’t know how we can, with any cer­tainty, iden­tify them).

        I do doubt that we deserve to kill them.

        Add all that together, and I reject the death penalty absolutely.

        Reply
  3. David in Friendswood says:
    28 June 2009 at 8:12 pm

    » Politi­cians act in ways they believe will get them elected.

    > That, at least, is inarguable.

    Osten­si­bly. All else being equal.

    Gov Sand­ford? Sen Ensign? Gov Elliot?

    I am not sure what those guys were think­ing, but it wasn’t that their acts would get them re-elected.

    Reply
  4. Tarian says:
    30 June 2009 at 5:43 am

    It’s a lit­tle hard to believe you’re devot­ing this much energy to defend­ing what was, essen­tially, an attempt at cyn­i­cal humor. The orig­i­nal def­i­n­i­tion you gave was delib­er­ately over-simplified to make an ironic point. Do you seri­ously believe that EVERY politi­cian enacts EVERY law SOLELY for the pur­pose of get­ting re-elected? If so, maybe we need to start award­ing hon­orary PhDs in Over-Generalization. So you take this horse which was, if not dead upon arrival, at the very least lying on its side whin­ny­ing its last breath, and try to ride it for some more chuck­les. Fine. We get it. There is often no rela­tion between law and justice.

    But then poor Ryan comes in and actu­ally attempts to fash­ion a more accu­rate state­ment out of your not-so bon mot, and you, for lack of a more refined descrip­tion, jump his shit. Great job, Mark! Con­grats on point­ing out the flaws in his efforts while not acknowl­edg­ing the inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness of the orig­i­nal asser­tion. I’m sure it makes him feel bet­ter for post­ing that you “excer­cised con­sid­er­ably (sic?) restraint.” Get off your high horse — oh, wait, as we’ve already estab­lished, that horse is dead! How about find­ing another and rid­ing it with a bit more humility?

    Reply
    • Mark Bennett says:
      30 June 2009 at 10:28 am

      Astronomers prac­tice their sci­ence with an under­stand­ing of the lim­its both of their instru­ments and of their tech­nique. They make no unfounded claims.

      Astrologers, by con­trast, prac­tice their art in the hopes of doing some­thing that is, if not impos­si­ble, then at least far beyond the sci­ence of the day. (As do lawyers who think the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem actu­ally pro­duces jus­tice, except by acci­dent. I hate to have to explain the metaphor, but I’ve dis­cov­ered that blog­ging with open com­ments, and try­ing to antic­i­pate all of the ways that com­menters can mis­un­der­stand so that I am not pecked to death by ducks, is writ­ing for the least com­mon denominator.)

      Either that or they are per­pe­trat­ing a fraud on suckers.

      There are peo­ple (prac­ti­tion­ers and suck­ers both) who earnestly believe that astrol­ogy leads to its intended end. It gen­er­ally doesn’t or can’t be proven to.

      Some­times, how­ever, astrologers, by sheer coin­ci­dence, get it right.

      Maybe the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem should come with a label: “for enter­tain­ment pur­poses only.”

      The premise that politi­cians act to get reelected was Ryan’s, not mine. It was offered by him in sup­port of a con­nec­tion between law and jus­tice. Take it up with him if you don’t like it.

      Again with “con­sid­er­ably”? It was an error, which I’d acknowl­edged. There are going to be more such errors in the next few days, since I’m using an old (eight years!) com­puter that is mys­te­ri­ously slow in accept­ing text input in a web browser. Would you rather I’d edited it after JGL pointed it out?

      It’s inter­est­ing that those who are vocally crit­i­cal of my reac­tion to Ryan’s piece are those who are reluc­tant either to con­tribute to the sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion or pub­licly to take own­er­ship of their own opin­ions by sign­ing their actual names.

      Reply
  5. Tarian says:
    30 June 2009 at 5:46 am

    Oh, and one more thing: Khan is the one who put Kirk in the decom­pres­sion cham­ber. Kant is the one who woke up after an extended period of sus­pended ani­ma­tion, surfed the inter­net, read a bunch of blogs by peo­ple who didn’t under­stand him, and promptly drowned him­self in the Danube out of despair.

    Reply
  6. Clay S. Conrad says:
    30 June 2009 at 9:55 am

    When in doubt, turn to Ambrose Bierce’s superla­tive Devil’s Dic­tio­nary. I don’t know if he defined jus­tice, but he did define injus­tice as “that bur­den which, though light­est in the hands, is heav­i­est on the back.”

    Thus, while we do not think much about “jus­tice,” as a peo­ple, we often think about injus­tice, but only when it falls upon our own backs. When we inflict it, we tend to do so cavalierly.

    Jus­tice, indeed, is a hard topic to explain, again para­phras­ing Bierce, as nat­u­ral­ists have yet to find an intact spec­i­men to exam­ine. INjus­tice, how­ever, is much eas­ier to define, as we find intact spec­i­ments of that daily. The best def­i­n­i­tion of jus­tice I can find, then, is the oppo­site of injus­tice — and injus­tice tends to strike us viscerally.

    Reply
  7. shg says:
    1 July 2009 at 7:27 am

    On the defense side of the equa­tion, two groups co-existent. They tend to share sim­i­lar sen­si­bil­i­ties, and often agree. But there is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence, which I believe to be Mark’s point in pars­ing Ryan’s cri­tique of Mark’s asser­tion that jus­tice and law are wholly dif­fer­ent con­cepts. I note in pass­ing that I agree with Mark.

    Philoso­phers can pon­der “jus­tice”. Lawyers are the mechan­ics who try to make the sys­tem of “jus­tice” work. Jus­tice in the first sen­tence is a con­cept. In the sec­ond sen­tence, it’s just a nice word that appeals to peo­ple and makes them feel bet­ter about a less-than-perfect sys­tem. From the sys­temic per­spec­tive, there is no, and can be no, “jus­tice” since each of us applies an entirely dif­fer­ent mea­sure. Jus­tice to the vic­tim and jus­tice to the defen­dant rarely, if ever, align. That we pre­tend that there is some objec­tive notion of jus­tice is foolish.

    For some­one like Ryan, a mem­ber of that group on the defense side of the equa­tion with sen­si­bil­i­ties sim­i­lar to those of crim­i­nal defense lawyers, the ele­va­tion of con­cep­tual jus­tice to a place where it should be coex­ten­sive with law is where the two groups part ways. Ryan is involved with the Inno­cence Project of Florida. Crim­i­nal defense lawyers are part of the Inno­cence and Guilty Project of Wher­ever they Hap­pen to Be. We are not con­cerned solely with seek­ing Jus­tice for inno­cent peo­ple. We defend the inno­cent and guilty alike.

    So, if there is such a thing as jus­tice, that would make us the cham­pi­ons of injus­tice. We don’t pro­mote this, because it would make us even more hated than we are now, but it’s where crim­i­nal defense lawyers and those who think like Ryan part company.

    If there is a fault to Mark’s post, it’s that he speaks an unpleas­ant truth, a truth that even our friends don’t like to hear.

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  8. Thomas R. Griffith (The Griffith Files - 1984 & Beyond) says:
    2 July 2009 at 2:30 pm

    Mr. K., Love your Motto. Would you mind if I included your motto in the book The Grif­fith Files (1984 & Beyond) ?

    It really should be the very first words to be put on the black­board on the first day of Law School. Then of course I would love to see my per­sonal moto tatooed on the back of the grad­u­at­ing classes hands, “NoMoreNolo­Con­tendere” Defend Em All & That’s That.

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