Just heard about this Caylee Anthony crap two or three days ago, ‘cause I don’t follow the prolefeed.

Far as I can tell, defense offered a theory that could explain known facts in a way that made the defendant look sketchy but not guilty, prosecution couldn’t disprove it. Bam. That’s what reasonable doubt means, acquittal was the right result. Same thing with that NYC police rape trial.

'course, I grew up in a family of lawyers arguing at the dinner table so legal ethics and the “lawyer’s way of thinking” are normal and the rest of you are doing it wrong.

Now legal ethics are a different, and superior, thing to prole ethics. Like, in California in the mid-90s legal ethics rules were changed so that if you learned something from a client, and by telling it you could save someone’s life, and you were absolutely sure it was completely irrelevant to your client’s case, you were now optionally allowed to tell it.

Because legal ethics aren’t “play nice” so much as “someone is depending on you: do it for them”. Like wielding the threat of cross-examination against a rape victim not to disprove her testimony but to push the psychological costs of pursing the case above her willingness to pay. I’ve seen that a lot as the go-to for “lawyers be unethical, yo”.

But the defendant doesn’t want to be found guilty, right? Otherwise he’d’ve just pled the charge. But the legal system’s a complicated thing that he can’t handle, so he trusts himself and his fate to your hands - recall that “power of attorney” means “power to commit to binding decisions on your behalf” - charges you with carrying out his will, and here you are, throwing the game or at least shaving points and for what? To satisfy your sense of propriety, so that you can avoid the unpleasantness of confronting someone and making them cry?

Because that’s not what the game’s about. The American justice system is an adversarial one, and as an attorney you’re not in court to serve yourself, you’re in there to serve the client who’s taken you on as a legal champion. So by playing nice you’d be betraying someone who put his trust in you, standing down and surrendering in the face of people who literally want to capture and cage him, because you don’t want to sully your precious, oh-so-important sense of purity?

And how fucking ethical is that?

And on top of that there’s the whole thing where I think murder prosecutions are morbid and nonsensical

(Where’s the victim? Dead? Oh, you mean not existing? Pf. What, her crying father? The one crying over a corpse, which is to say meat? Pf, necrophile. What, her crying mother? The one crying over a personality and identity that now does not exist beyond her imagination, and as such is on an equal plane of reality with Draco fucking Malfoy? Pf, fangirl.)

And on top of on top of that there’s the whole thing where I think the idea of a justice system is an unsporting attempt to declare losers winners after the fact. I’d be totally down with trials if they just established fact, and I’d totally totally be down with cops if they fed into a justice system that just established fact - then they’d be noir P.I.s! - but sentencing ruins everything.