Wall Street Journal - October 20, 1983 - p. 31

Letters to the Editor: Do Lawyers Court Public Contempt?

Your readers should have the benefit of my full statement about representing murderers so that they can properly judge the ethics of the legal profession. This is what I said in the introduction to my book:

"I do not apologize for (or feel guilty about) helping to let a murderer go free—even though I realize that someday one of my clients may go out and kill again. Since nothing like this has ever happened, I cannot know for sure how I would react. I know that I hope I would not regret what I had done—any more than a surgeon should regret saving the life of a patient who recovers and later kills an innocent victim."

I believe that statement reflects the position not only of most defense lawyers, but of the Code of Professional Responsibility.

As for the description in my book, "The Best Defense," of the tactic I used to trick a detective into telling the truth, my cross-examination was approved by the Court of Appeals, as well it should have been. Letting the detective think that his conversation may have been recorded, simply encouraged him to remember it truthfully, rather than tailor it to the prosecutor's needs.

If the public has doubts whether defense lawyers should zealously defend even guilty defendants, I recommend that they consider the alternative. It's rather easy to imagine what a legal system would be like if lawyers could not represent those regarded as guilty: most countries in the world have such systems, and their prisons are filled with innocent people. We should be proud of our legal system's insistence that even the guilty must be zealously defended so the rights of all citizens are adequately protected.

Prof. Alan M. Derhsowitz
Harvard Law School

Cambridge, Mass.