Do you agree or disagree with what they are saying? Would you add anything?
(Cole, Smith and Dejong – Chapters 9 & 10
Grubb & Hemby – Chapter 11
PDF – Silenced Stories: How Victim Impact Evidence in Capital Trials Prevents the Jury from Hearing the Constitutionally Required Story of the Defendant)
This is what the student wrote:
As a criminal defense attorney, you are hired to defend a client accused of drug trafficking.Your client is unwilling to accept a plea offer.Outline the steps in the criminal trial and the types of evidence that you should present at
the trial to defend your client. Justify your response with material from the textbook and at least one scholarly academic journal article.The role of a defense attorney 1s to defend the right of their client without prejudice or partiality. So often, the defense
attorney may be overloaded with cases and may seek to have the client accept a plea of guilt and move on with other cases. There are other defense attorneys who seek the truth and
try to represent their clients to the best of their ability and are guided by the law. There are cases in which the client is guilty of the crime
and maybe be caught with drugs in their possession. In this instance, the negotiation of a plea bargain may be necessary to lower the sentencing. It is important for the defense to have and maintain a good relationship with the
police, judge, and the other attorney in the event a plea is necessary to allow a lower time to serve for their client.
When a client refuses a plea
negotiation it is important that the defense attorney lays out the facts of the case, the evidence against their client, advise of the
sufficiency of the evidence that is stacked against the client, and the possibility of a conviction and stiffer sentencings’Furthermore, the role of a defense attorney is responsible for performing key functions of
making sure that the prosecution proves their case in court or has substantial evidence to prove the guilt of the client, before entering a guilty plea. Cole, G. Smith, C & DeJong, C
(2018) The American System of Criminology Justice (16th ed)
The problem of providing effective
representation within the framework of the guilty-plea system is a problem that cannot be resolved satisfactorily. Contrary to the assumption of the Supreme Court and other observers that plea negotiation ordinarily occurs in an atmosphere of informed choice,
private defense attorneys, public defenders, and appointed attorneys are all subject to bureaucratic pressures and conflicts of interest
that seem unavoidable in any regime grounded on the guilty plea. Far from safeguarding the fairness of the plea negotiation process, the defense attorney is himself a frequent source
of abuse, and no mechanism of reform seems adequate to control the dangers. As dilemmas
multiply, it may be desirable to step back and reexamine the assumptions that an apparent “practical necessity” has thrust upon us. The
difficulty of providing effective representation within the guilty-plea system may reflect the intolerable nature of the system itself. The
assumption that some form of procedural tinkering or some appeal to professional ideals can resolve every difficulty obscures the nature
of the system that we have created a system in which vital consequences turn on a judgment
that is irrelevant to any rational goal of the criminal process and in which the defense attorney invariably has personal interests that depart from those of his client. The burden should rest with the advocates of plea
bargaining to propose some mechanism that can achieve the asserted advantages of the
guilty-plea process without, at the same time, yielding the abuses that this article has described. If, as I believe, the task is impossible, we must either endure these abuses
or else restructure our criminal justice system to eliminate the overwhelming importance of the de1313 Hein Online –84 Yale L.J. 1313 1974-1975 The Yale Law Journal defendants choice of the plea, a choice that is usually bent
to the purposes of defense attorneys and other participants in the criminal justice system rather than to the interests of the defendant or
society.
