Some time during my first three years as an attorney, around 1991, I remember discussing a case with an attorney at my law firm who had practiced law a few years longer than I had. He was an aspiring criminal defense attorney, had recently been to a week long Criminal Defense Tactics seminarin Colorado, and was telling me about a new serious criminal case he had accepted. By “serious” I mean that that charge was a felony that would have included a long prison sentence if the man had been found guilty.

After he told me some particulars about the case, I asked him, “Did you ask the Defendant if he was guilty?” He smiled and said, “No, I’m too good of an attorney for that!”

What did he mean? Attorneys are governed by certain ethical considerations mandated by every state bar. We must not, for example, do anything in a case with the purpose of deceiving the court, the judge in the case. If an attorney does not ask his client if he is guilty, then that attorney can “presume” he is innocent and present any evidence he finds that he believes will exculpate his client, that is, will make the judge or jury declare the Defendant innocent. This also means that he can present evidence that will fool a jury even though it would not fool a judge.

And this is one of the primary reasons Americans disdain criminal defense attorneys so much. In essence such an attorney takes a bribe (fee) in order to pervert justice (in order to get someone to declare a guilty person innocent).

I have been a very successful criminal defense attorney. But, I always ask my client if he committed the underlying offense. If he did not, then I will advise him to take the case to trial or I will work diligently for a dismissal of the charge or a plea bargain to a different charge that he actually did. If a client clearly announces his innocence and the prosecutor will not offer an adequate plea bargain, then I will almost always advise my client to take the case to jury trial.  I will also advise my client to take the witness stand so that he can tell the jury his side of the story. I believe I have won every single criminal trial in which my client was wrongly accused of a crime and one of the keys to my success is that I have usually advised my client to testify.

So, no, I am not “too good of an attorney” to ask my client if he committed the crime or not. I made up my mind a long time ago that I would not take a bribe in order to pervert justice.