Law and Order Spinoff: Let's Bash the Defense Some More
Why are all criminal defense lawyers depicted on Law & Order shows as being "ethically challenged?" The creators of the new Law & Order spin-off, the one that begins with the late (and great) Jerry Orbach, have announced that this depiction not only will continue, it will be a plot point specifically written into the formula for the show.
But for all that is new - including early guest appearances by Annabella Sciorra, Lorraine Bracco and Peter Coyote, each playing ethically challenged defense lawyers - there will be much that viewers will recognize after Briscoe has passed.
The reason, I suspect, is because that is how the series creator, Dick Wolf, thinks of us. Comments like this tell the story:
Mr. Wolf, speaking by phone last week from California, said that "one of the things both Walon and I hope to accomplish with this is to demolish the shibboleths that have grown up around criminal law, namely that a defense attorney will never ask their client if they did the crime."
"All defense attorneys, if you give them three drinks and a good steak, will say that of course they've had clients who confessed to them and who they know to be guilty."
I've taken Mr. Wolf to task before on TalkLeft for his comments about defense lawyers.
"Any of the people you see" working as assistant DAs in "Crime & Punishment" "could clean out their desks on a Friday afternoon and double or triple their salary on Monday morning" by going to work in a law firm, Wolf said recently. "They really do think they're doing God's work."
"Moreover, he said...I don't hold criminal defense attorneys in very high regard, based on what they do for a living, which is basically getting guilty people off."
My response:
Now come on, Mr. Wolf. You don't think public defenders believe they're doing God's work? You don't think they couldn't get a job in a corporate firm earning twice or three times as much?
The lawyers who dedicate themselves to freeing the innocent, that's not God's work to them?
The lawyers who make a career of trying to save a life in a death penalty trial, while underfunded, understaffed and underpaid, you don't think they believe they're doing God's work?
Prosecutors and Public Defenders have a few things in common: Both groups have chosen public service, and in so doing, they have sacrificed more financially rewarding opportunities to become overworked and often under-appreciated public servants. Prosecutors have no leg up on defenders in terms of doing God's work.
Mr. Wolf replied in the comments section to the post:
My name is spelled without an "e."
I believe you do a grave disservice to the men and women who toil in often underpaid and seriously underappreciated jobs in all aspects of Law Enforcement.
I still think he's wrong. Consider, as I said in the earlier post,
The majority of prosecutors don't stay in it for the length of their careers. They leave and become....private criminal defense lawyers. Look into the background of the lawyers for the Enron and WorldCom and other high-level corporate crime defendants, and more often than not they will have "former U.S. Attorney" in their bios. What happened to their belief in "God's work?" But how many criminal defense lawyers can you name who left the practice to become prosecutors? Which stay truer to their beliefs? Or put another way, whose beliefs were truer in the first place?
It's probably a hopeless case, but I'd still like to convince Mr. Wolf to do a show that included honorable criminal defense lawyers. "Justice is a three-legged stool," as the saying goes. Take one leg away and the system falls down. The court, the defense and the prosecution often need to work together, particularly when the integrity of the system is at issue. Surely Mr. Wolf can see the benefit of presenting the justice system in this light.
I'd even offer to provide technical assistance for free.
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