As a TLDR of the research, death penalty cases cost more at every stage. Significantly more. In part, that’s because, rightly, both the prosecution and defence take more time and spend more money on them.
As for appeals, death penalty cases cost up to 10x more than non-death penalty cases in the appeal stage.
For fairly obvious reasons, convicts facing the death penalty lodge more appeals than prisoners not facing the death penalty and they fight them harder. As do the prosecutors.
I know that a criminal trial is predicated on the presumption of “innocent until proven guilty,” but I’ve never heard the claim that “a lawyer cannot represent someone they know to be guilty.”
If that were the case, any defendant who openly admitted to the act they were charged with wouldn’t be able to hire a lawyer at all. There’s a lot more to mounting a legal defense than settling the question of “did this suspect do the thing they were accused of?”
You’re right it is not strictly correct that you cannot represent someone you know to be guilty.
Exactly what you can do depends on the circumstances, your particular professional body’s rules and your conscience.
I think most ethics committees would agree that you can’t put forward a positive case that your client didn’t do it.
You can challenge the prosection’s evidence. You can challenge whether the legal requirements for conviction are met.
You can mitigate.
What is also interesting is the question raised by point 3 of @evilkolbot’s list - what do you do if your client tells you he is innocent but wants to plead guilty nevertheless?
I know in the UK, there’s a whole bunch of advice the lawyer would have to give and make sure they can prove they gave. We don’t have Alford pleas so if you say you’re guilty, you’re saying you’re guilty.
If they tell you they’re guilty you’re not allowed to plead their innocence in court. If that’s what they want you to do you should remove yourself from the case.
Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work here in the UK. Is it different in the US?
Edit: looked up Alford pleas. That’s fucked up. I know how it’s used, but lying to the court is still lying.
Not technically lying as I understand it. The plea is “I’m innocent but I’m going to plead guilty”. It’s messed up but it’s essentially in the same category as medieval pleadings that someone attacked your wine shipment with bows and arrows and drew out a large part of the wine and replaced it with salt water when actually you’re alleging that there was a shipping accident and the barrel fell in the sea and was spoiled.
The Alford plea ought to be the mediæval plea of nolo contendere (usually translated “no contest” but more accurately translated “I do not wish to fight”). It accepts the penalty (generally a proffered plea bargain) without admitting guilt. It’s used when accepting a plea bargain for a criminal case under one sovereignty while preserving a right to defend against another (Federal/State), or accepting a criminal penalty while preserving a right to contest a civil case stemming from the same alleged offense.
Its origin lies in trial by combat. “I give up. I can’t face you (or your champion) on the battlefield, you’ll kill me.”
And the Alford plea stems from the same thing we’ve been discussing in another thread: the gross disproportion between plea bargains and sentences after trial. Many innocent people are well advised to plead guilty because we impose a ridiculously severe punishment for having the temerity to make the state prove its case.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
