Partly Cloudy, 64°
I’m not going to lie to you. We’re in trouble. The prosecutor has the judge in his pocket and a whole staff of paralegals working day and night to put you away. All I can offer you is my word, but my word is good, and I swear to you that I am fully committed to either winning this case or losing it. Win or lose, I’ll be here, either fighting for you or looking like I’m fighting for you. Win or lose, I’ll collect my governmentally mandated fee and we’ll both go home. Or I’ll go home and you’ll go to jail. It doesn’t matter to me.
I’m not about to make promises I can’t keep. So I won’t tell you that you’re going to get out of this without jail time, or that I’ll invest myself in this case and make it my priority to represent your side to the best of my ability. Hell, I won’t even try to convince you that I care what happens to you! What I will say is that I will do my darndest to do at least enough in this trial to get paid. And I can take that to the bank.
Look, you didn’t make this easy for yourself. Not having enough money to actually hire a lawyer who is motivated to win the case for you, well, that’s a mistake a rich person would never ever make. You didn’t make any other mistakes, and I think you’re probably innocent, but still! What were you thinking? Do you want to go to jail? A lawyer paid to win cases probably could have kept this out of court. But I’m not that type of wheeling and dealing, driven, give-my-all type lawyer! I’m an honest to god public defender, and that means I’ve had my spirit of justice slowly crushed out of me over years of working within a corrupt system that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.
No conflict of interest here, buddy. When I commit to a client, I commit exactly to the extent that I have to in order to ensure that the case is quick and uncomplicated. If that means not staying up through the night sifting through case files in the hope of an epiphany or not going out of my way to investigate witnesses who might better be able to represent the facts of the case, then goddammit I will not do those things! That’s a guarantee.
Am I giving you my full, undivided attention? No, of course not! Given this country’s gross practices of mass incarceration, I’ve been saddled with so many cases that I don’t even think I quite remember your name. Is that going to prevent me from giving you the best damn representation this state has ever seen? Obviously! Even if I was motivated to put time into your case, I wouldn’t be physically able to. I am exhausted and demoralized. Do you have any better options? No!
Now let’s get out there. Hold on a second. Put on this suit jacket or this orange jumpsuit. I want to make sure you to make either a good or a bad impression. And do you think you could get your mother to cry during the cross-examination so the jury sympathizes with you? Or maybe a loud man to yell “he’s guilty!” over and over again until he’s removed from the court? I don’t care which.
