Stardate 20020221.1105

(On Screen): The lengths to which some defense attorneys will go beggars belief. A doctor in Georgia paid a guy $250 and gave him a gun to kill the doctor's wife; the guy was a plant and the whole thing was taped. The doctor's attorney is trying to claim that the doctor was play-acting because he thought he was part of a police training exercise. I don't think that the jury will buy it.

But lawyers are part of a larger system and I really feel sympathy for them, all of them. Lawyers and police have to deal with the left-hand outliers on the bell curve, life's refuse, the worst we have to offer. They're the ones who have to come and find murdered children, or to try to deal with people that most of us would probably beat the crap out of. When things go horribly wrong, they're the first guys to arrive and they have to see and deal with horrors most of us wouldn't ever want to be anywhere near.

It's a tough job, but it has to be done. The defense attorneys are part of that process; they are part of what makes our system work. When a defense attorney is defending some vile scum, in a sense he's defending us all. He is helping to erect a barrier, to enforce burden of proof on the state so that the state cannot arbitrarily lock up anyone it wants to. When someone is clearly guilty then the proof will be there and the defense attorney will fail, and probably will be glad. But without the barrier, none of us would be safe.