Hypothetically, my daughter is a defense attorney. My son is dating a woman who, while driving under the influence, kills my cousin’s 16-year-old daughter and her 2-year-old child. My son asks his sister to defend his girlfriend—would that be legally allowed? For context, my cousin’s father is my mother’s brother.
Defense isn’t about helping people escape consequences, it’s about making sure they receive a fair trial and the consequences are appropriate for their crime. Even with this system there are still wrongful convictions and police/prosecutorial misconduct.
Many years ago we had a deadly DUI crash that the local news went apeshit over because the story was easy to hype. Drunk driver kills a young mom, dad, and their 3yo daughter. It was covered non-stop, until it came out during the trial mom and dad were high as kites on meth and pulled out in front of the drunk driver when they should have waited for him to cross the intersection. Dude still got convicted, he was driving drunk and killed three people, but his sentence reflected the dad’s impaired driving and what that contributed. Also, as soon as the news couldn’t sob story their coverage they dropped it, barely a blip when the verdict came out.
Thanks for this. I know this intellectually but admittedly I can be emotional just thinking about how I’d feel if a drunk driver killed multiple people I care about, or myself.