Tuesday, the courthouse was set for trial in a fraud case. One Matthew was on trial. He was late and sent his twin brother, hoping no one would notice. Unfortunately, it was his own lawyer who noticed. And more unfortunately for both twins, when the judge figured it out, the twin posing as Matthew got 178 days in jail for contempt, while his brother is sitting on a no bond hold for failing to appear at trial.
For those of you who think lawyers have no ethics, consider this, if we were to let a man be convicted and it was the wrong guy, and he went to prison - would that be right? I can think of no lawyer, prosecutor or defense attorney who doesn't think wrongly convicting innocent people is the worst possible thing.
This guy's lawyer had to say something or risk prosecution of the wrong guy. It's a terrible quandary for the defense attorney. Because he's technically doing the right thing, but it's his own client, the one he's supposed to be fighting for, that's getting into the most trouble. As a defense attorney, however, it's not part of your job to babysit your clients and make sure they show up in court. This guy knew what time he needed to be in court, he'd probably known for months. Short of holding the guys hand, how was the attorney to be responsible for that?
See this editorial from the St. Petersburg Times on lawyer ethics. It offers a great perspective on the kind of things criminal defense attorneys have to deal with.
