Washington Post Addresses New Movement To Include Public Defenders and Other Defense Lawyers For The Indigent From Politics

Compassion apparently has no place in politics.

Journalist Philip Bump, of The Washington Post, authored an article titled “Why being a public defender is increasingly bad for your political future” (link here:  http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/17/why-being-a-public-defender-is-increasingly-bad-for-your-political-future/) discusses attacks on political candidates who, at one time, represented indigent clients on court-appointed cases.  These lawyers include Hillary Clinton.  Typically, these lawyers make between 10% - 20% of what their work would be valued in the private sector, and take this work out of a belief that an imbalanced legal system is a failed one. 

The author writes: 

Congressional Research Service compiled data on the composition of the 113th Congress earlier this year. Congress includes more than  200 members that have a background in practicing law, including "7 former judges (all in the House), and 32 prosecutors ... who have served in city, county, state, federal, or military capacities." Prosecutors get to run on their record of putting criminals away. Defenders don't. A search of the House's historic database of information on members turns up five members of the House since 2000 who list work as public defenders in their biographies. One is no longer in Congress. Another later worked as a prosecutor.

Steve Benjamin, former president of the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers, stated that “It should never be that an attorney who fulfills his constitutional and ethical obligation to represent a person who is criminally accused faces a question about that attorney's character or qualifications for any office.”  And Republican Charlie Condon, the former attorney general of South Carolina, called such attacks on candidates "fundamentally wrong", stating “The basis of our whole constitutional system is that it's a noble calling, it's a really positive profession, positive calling, to be a lawyer and particularly a criminal defense lawyer."

I am a former Deputy Public Defender for the County of Los Angeles.  It is a badge I wear with honor.  Allowing our society, as a whole, to let someone be subjected to the criminal justice process -- without the aid of a competent advocate -- would be, collectively, more horrible than what any individual can do.  Innocent people would be convicted.  Some executed.  Sentences would be unfairly doled out.  And the poor of our country would be treated completely differently than the rich, to a much greater extent than is already the case.  

There are lawyers who are willing to forego personal gain, and try to make sure that justice is administrated properly to everyone.  They protect us all from acting like savages.  They should be applauded for their work – certainly more than those who chose to make much more money discussing money, like corporate attorneys, or putting people away without ever talking to them, like prosecutors and judges.  

I hope the day comes when a prosecutor is running for office, and someone plays a ridiculous closing argument they made, filled with inflammatory language that bears nothing to the facs, or shows a cruel streak of sentencing offers, and the public says “no way can he be in charge – he is an animal.”