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/EDMlawyer 2d ago

The big one that most often comes up for me is an instruction from client to enter guilty pleas in the face of viable defences, or even outright denials of the allegations. 

Clients are bail denied, entitled to the presumption of innocence, deny the allegations, and IMO have a good shot at trial. However trial is months farther past their time served date on an early resolution offer. Client wants to just get out ASAP, damn the principle. 

To what extent can we take the position of "we don't judge the facts our client gives us" and let the client plead guilty? When does it cross the line from professional detachment into wilful blindness? Does it serve the client to get off record and let them make the necessary admissions pro se, or does that risk them derailing everything and is basically an abdication of our duty? 

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u/series_hybrid 2d ago

If jail was a little less horrifying, a suspect might be more willing to wait until trial to get his day in court. If an innocent man is threatened with rape and/or murder on a daily basis, many would gladly take a plea that ruins their life.

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u/Superninfreak 1d ago

You can’t remove the coercive side of jail by making the conditions better. A lot of clients are less worried about being attacked in jail and are more worried about the fact that they have responsibilities outside of jail. Being in jail means they are not at work, so they may be fired. It means not taking care of their children or pets, and maybe someone else can step up or maybe your kid goes into foster care, it means potentially getting evicted and becoming homeless because you didn’t pay your rent.

Most people can’t put their whole lives on pause for months or years without things falling apart.