Vicky | BLOGGER
Should Lawyers Defend a Client They Think is Guilty?
According to the statistics in the past six years from National Police Agency (NPA) in Taiwan, there are more than 250,000 criminal cases each year, including offenses against public safety, offenses of drugs, offenses of larceny, and many other offenses. When it comes to crime, people usually resort to a lawyer to go to court for defending themselves as a way of seeking legal avenues. While some people think that lawyers should not defend a sinner, it is legally necessary to protect the offenders because of the protection of human rights and the presumption of innocence principle.
Firstly, acquiring a lawyer’s defense is a fundamental right guaranteed by the law for every citizen. Based on the defense system mentioned in Taiwanese Constitutional Interpretation No.396 (Feb. 02, 1996), offering the indicted sufficient protection, such as assigning a public defender to take a stand and debate for them is a legal provision. For one thing, the defendants are permitted to possess a chance to speak up for themselves on the court. For another, it ensures that they would not be immoderately punished under the professional protection of a defender. On top of that, some exceptional cases involving offenders who have difficulty making a full statement due to the mental disabilities or come from low-income households are required to allocate an attorney for them since they are incapacitated or unable to afford the attorney fee. In brief, receiving a lawyer’s defense fulfills people’s right of litigation.
Second, “Every person who is accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.” This is what the presumption of innocence principle holds. This theory can be first found in the book On Crimes and Punishments (1764) written by an Italian criminologist, Cesare Beccaria, who said that one cannot be seen as a criminal before the judgment, and neither can the society deprive a person of public protection until the irrefutable evidence is given. To put it differently, a lawyer’s duty is to understand the case with the client and analyze how to help deal with the lawsuit rather than to judge whether the client is guilty or not. Therefore, before being convicted by the judge, one should be considered innocent and has the right to ask a lawyer for assistance. Formulated on the concept of the presumption of innocence principle, everyone is qualified to be supported by a lawyer.
Although these rules are authorized by the law, some may argue that whoever commits a crime should be severely punished and they do not deserve a lawyer’s defense. As a matter of fact, there are many innocent defendants whoaccidentally become culprits merely on account of the public misunderstanding or the prosecutor’s negligence. Chiang Kuo-Ching’s case, which happened in 1996 was the best example of miscarriage of justice. He was tortured to extract a confession without a defender’s help and thus ended up being wrongfully executed. What’s more,
even though it is equitable to penalize
the criminals, they can still get an
opportunity for a reduced sentence
with the aid of a lawyer’s defense to
avoid an excessive punishment which
helps supervise whether the law enforcement officers execute the law properly. Given these considerations, despite the fact that one must get a punishment for his bad behaviors, lawyers stillneed to dispense justice for the innocent and prompt the judges to apply the discipline appropriately.
In a nutshell, lawyers should work hard to defend every client in order to implement the protection of human rights and follow the presumption of innocence principle. It is the state’s responsibility as well as an essential human right to assign a lawyer to each accused. Not only can it avoid the abuse or misapplication of the criminal law, but it can also clear the innocent’s name and prevent the offenders from being sentenced to overly unreasonable trials.
Sources
Pictures are retrieved from:
Background: https://reurl.cc/41m61R
References
Beccaria, C. (1764). On Crimes and Punishments