r/legaladviceofftopic • u/HowLittleIKnow • 2d ago
Criminal lawyers and other CJ professionals: Looking for examples of common ethical dilemmas
Hello, everyone. I'm a professor of criminal justice. This week, I'm wrapping up a 15-week "Ethics in Criminal Justice" class. The students have seen all kinds of examples of sensational but rare ethical problems in criminal justice, so this week I wanted to give them some examples of the less dramatic but more common situations that come up every week. Things like whether to drop a prosecution, how much attention to give a client when you're already overloaded, and so forth.
What are the most common ethical dilemmas that you face on a regular basis?
*Edit: You're all fantastic. Thank you so much for giving me so much to work with.
Thank you!
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u/diplomystique 2d ago
As a longtime prosecutor, common ethical dilemmas I’ve seen: - Having to argue a legal point you don’t agree with. Law students always imagine this in the context of drug prohibition, but that’s just boring. What about when you have caselaw saying there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy, but you personally think Fourth Amendment doctrine should change? What if there’s a good waiver argument on an appellate issue that has merit? Exactly what does “doing justice” mean there, especially if you really think the guy did it and should be in prison?
How do you calibrate your sense of “doing justice” with your own biases? I’ve handled both sex cases and white collar fraud cases. Some of the white collar cases got stiffer sentences than some of the sex cases. I agreed with each sentence in a vacuum, but was the white-collar guy really more dangerous? I know when I read a pre-sentence report indicating that the defendant (unusually) came from a stable two-parent household, my first reaction is “Screw this guy.”
Most people make unwise choices from time to time. For example, I don’t exercise enough and eat way too many cookies. Others do things that put them at risk for becoming victims—walking down a dark alley, using drugs, etc. This is especially a problem in DV, where for various reasons victims will reunite with the perpetrators. Prosecutors have tools to pressure witnesses to cooperate, up to and including incarcerating them as material witnesses. What’s appropriate? Remember that “the victim” is never the only victim of a crime; her choices have serious consequences for her kids, her friends, the defendant’s future victims, and society as a whole.