High profile criminal lawyer commits suicide.

[Fern]

I've often wondered how some criminal lawyers could sleep at night after defending some shockingly brutal murder cases. Obviously not too well, Greg King one of N.Z.'s most successful and high profile criminal lawyer committed suicide. He left a note for his wife saying he was depressed and was haunted by the dead etc. She said he was too proud to ask for help, but what a dreadful ending for 'doing your job'.
RIP Greg.

King, one of our most successful and high-profile criminal lawyers, was apparently unable to handle the double life a defence lawyer must lead - the placing aside of doubts about a person's own guilt or morality in order to provide them with the very best defence.
It's a central tenet of our justice system that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
Yet while it may be an integral part of our Bill of Rights, it's often a principle we sometimes either take for granted or just ignore altogether.

All of us make judgments about others all the time, based on everything from the way they dress to what car they drive or the colour of their skin. We have laws that prohibit the publication of prejudicial information before trials but that doesn't stop us forming opinions either.

Sometimes it really is impossible to separate guilt from innocence. Other times those who stand in the dock in our courts have a rap sheet as long as your arm and the chances are they almost certainly done it, m'lud.
But they're still entitled to a fair trial. That's what separates a democracy from a dictatorship. And that means even the indefensible must be defended.

Nothing could have prepared King for the opprobrium that would be heaped upon him following his next big case, the successful defence of Ewen Macdonald, who was cleared by a jury of murdering his brother-in-law Scott Guy on his Fielding farm.

Despite some compelling circumstantial evidence against Macdonald, King turned in a masterful performance before the jury, placing enough doubt in their minds that Macdonald was the killer to have him acquitted.
Many people thought Macdonald did it, and questioned how and why King could have defended him.
Behind the scenes, it seems King was having doubts of his own.

Last week, Coroner Garry Evans released excerpts from a suicide note left by the high-flying lawyer, who took his own life just four months after the conclusion of the trial.

In the note, King spoke of being exhausted, disillusioned, depressed, and haunted by the dead from the numerous homicide cases he had been involved in.
"He says he has been genuinely torn between doing his job and his conscience, which keeps asking him ‘is this really what you want to be doing'? Coroner Evans said. "He hates himself for what he has done."

stuff.nz.

 

[SifuPhil]

We all have to follow the paths we've created for ourselves. Although it's sad that he felt this required suicide, he could have changed paths. He might even have become a prosecutor - perhaps that would have quieted the ghosts.

Law is a dirty business, especially defending scum - I would be surprised if King were the first to have a conscience.

 

[Diwundrin]

How we feel about Defence Lawyers is quite confusing isn't it? They're heroes for getting those we sympathise with off, and booed and hissed for letting villains off the hook. But they do exactly the same work in both instances. It's their job.

It must be the most rule ridden and complicated job anyone can do. Rocket scientists work with hard fast factual data. Lawyers work with intellectual concepts and the job is to decipher and fit real events into the context of what intention those concepts represented to whoever wrote them at the time. Nuthin to it right? It's mind games in it's highest form and played by the elite of mental athletes.

It isn't the lawyers' fault that they find loopholes in the rules. That is the very purpose of their existence. Finding them is what their minds are trained to do and why the best thinkers among them become 'high profile'.

They don't invent the loopholes, they are the tiny twists overlooked by previous generations of legislators who were trying to formularize the infinite number of tiny incidents that constitute an 'event' into an understandable, and basic rule. An impossibility.
The loopholes were overlooked because what made common sense a century ago sometimes becomes irrelevant or just plain wrong due to advances in science, in improved diagnoses of how the human mind works, or simply because society has changed. The perceptions of the public have changed radically since most laws were written.

Despite all philosophies and religious proclamations, laws are nothing more than basic rules that make human society possible. They reflect the culture of the society, they don't form the culture. If there's something wrong with the laws then that means our views of justice have changed and it's up to legislators to fine tune the laws to fit. It's the Lawyers' jobs to bring the errors or loopholes in them to our notice.

We don't hang bankrupts now. Now that's a real shame in some cases, I can name a few who deserve to be.
But who here would go and watch poor old Bill down the road swing because he lost the job that kept the mortgage payments up and his house isn't worth what the bank lent him any longer? He would have qualified for the noose for that little 'crime' 200 years ago.

Some 'scumbag' defense lawyer found a loophole in that law and it was given a good looking at and changed, and we don't hang Bill now.

That villains get off also offers the opportunity for legislators to close the loophole he wriggled through.

If a Lawyer's conscience prevents him from defending someone then he can recuse himself, or simply not accept the brief. And he perhaps should rethink his career path because conscience shouldn't come into the equation. It's just a job with a lot of rules and tweaking them to suit the particular conscience or beliefs of the lawyer employed is definitely not in his brief!

Remember that old tradition of the condemned tipping the executioner? That had two purposes. One to ensure he'd make a nice clean job of it. And two, as a nod of understanding that it wasn't personal, that he was just doing his job.

If we jump about and snarl over some travesty of justice then how do we want it improved? Do we scrap the scumbag lawyers entirely and just vote on a verdict, in a snap decision based on what we see on a 20 second News grab and vote enmasse through a Twitter feed?
Would lawyers feel better about themselves if it all boiled down to 'LIKE' votes? Gawd 'elp us.

 

[SifuPhil]

How we feel about Defence Lawyers is quite confusing isn't it? They're heroes for getting those we sympathise with off, and booed and hissed for letting villains off the hook. But they do exactly the same work in both instances. It's their job.

For some it's that need for power, money and glory. And they let a lot more guilty ones go.

It must be the most rule ridden and complicated job anyone can do. Rocket scientists work with hard fast factual data. Lawyers work with intellectual concepts and the job is to decipher and fit real events into the context of what intention those concepts represented to whoever wrote them at the time. Nuthin to it right? It's mind games in it's highest form and played by the elite of mental athletes.

Indulging in a bit of whimsey, are we? "The elite of mental athletes"? More like "The dregs with big mouths and scheming minds".

It isn't the lawyers' fault that they find loopholes in the rules. That is the very purpose of their existence. Finding them is what their minds are trained to do and why the best thinkers among them become 'high profile'.

Silly me - I thought a criminal lawyer's prime function was to prove the guilt or innocence of a person, not find loopholes.

They don't invent the loopholes, they are the tiny twists overlooked by previous generations of legislators who were trying to formularize the infinite number of tiny incidents that constitute an 'event' into an understandable, and basic rule. An impossibility.
The loopholes were overlooked because what made common sense a century ago sometimes becomes irrelevant or just plain wrong due to advances in science, in improved diagnoses of how the human mind works, or simply because society has changed. The perceptions of the public have changed radically since most laws were written.

There was a scene in a Tom Clancy novel that will forever stick in my mind. It had to do with tax codes, not criminal law, but I think it equally apropos. An aide brings in bound volumes of legal code, huge book after huge book, and places them on a table in the courtroom. Suddenly the table breaks under their massive weight and this event is used by the lawyer to illustrate how over-wrought the laws are, and that when it gets to the point where even a full-time specialist cannot keep up with the laws in their field then there is something seriously wrong with the system.

Despite all philosophies and religious proclamations, laws are nothing more than basic rules that make human society possible. They reflect the culture of the society, they don't form the culture. If there's something wrong with the laws then that means our views of justice have changed and it's up to legislators to fine tune the laws to fit. It's the Lawyers' jobs to bring the errors or loopholes in them to our notice.

They both reflect AND form a culture. Take marijuana laws in the U.S.: they reflect a long-standing power-gambit begun by politicians and businessmen, and they have also influenced (read=formed) generations of society into performing "criminal" actions for something that is not in essence criminal. The laws created a culture of paranoia and distrust of authority.

Legislators are for the most part out of touch with the common man, so therefore are not truly qualified to fine-tune anything. And once again, it is not a lawyer's job to look for loopholes unless they are that certain lowest breed of attorney who HAS to find loopholes in order to win their cases.

We don't hang bankrupts now. Now that's a real shame in some cases, I can name a few who deserve to be.
But who here would go and watch poor old Bill down the road swing because he lost the job that kept the mortgage payments up and his house isn't worth what the bank lent him any longer? He would have qualified for the noose for that little 'crime' 200 years ago.

In most cases it would be a courtesy to the bankrupt party. Since most of society judges you on your bankroll, being bankrupt is the equivalent of wearing a scarlet "A" on your chest. Hanging would actually be the easy way out.

Some 'scumbag' defense lawyer found a loophole in that law and it was given a good looking at and changed, and we don't hang Bill now.

That villains get off also offers the opportunity for legislators to close the loophole he wriggled through.

You seem to have a particular affinity for loopholes, so I'll just leave you to them at this point.

If a Lawyer's conscience prevents him from defending someone then he can recuse himself, or simply not accept the brief. And he perhaps should rethink his career path because conscience shouldn't come into the equation. It's just a job with a lot of rules and tweaking them to suit the particular conscience or beliefs of the lawyer employed is definitely not in his brief!

"Lawyer's conscience" still sounds, in my mind at least, suspiciously like "military intelligence". If he's a public defender I would think he has far less leeway in whether or not he accepts a case.

And since when is conscience put on the shelf for ANY job? That leads to being the Senior Torture Application Specialist in the Inquisition which, although many trial lawyers (and lawyers in general) are probably over-qualified for such a position, is still something you do NOT want in an enlightened society.

Remember that old tradition of the condemned tipping the executioner? That had two purposes. One to ensure he'd make a nice clean job of it. And two, as a nod of understanding that it wasn't personal, that he was just doing his job.

I knew of the first but not the second - thank you!

If we jump about and snarl over some travesty of justice then how do we want it improved? Do we scrap the scumbag lawyers entirely and just vote on a verdict, in a snap decision based on what we see on a 20 second News grab and vote enmasse through a Twitter feed?
Would lawyers feel better about themselves if it all boiled down to 'LIKE' votes? Gawd 'elp us.

Personally I rather think the star system works quite well, the one used for movie and restaurant reviews ...

 

[Diwundrin]

I don't think that the US and British based legal codes are interchangeable, or even all that comparable Phil. Different species.
I was waffling about the system that NZ and OZ work with and the basic reasoning that I've heard to describe the processes of it.

That is, how it is designed to work, in a perfect world. But of course what ever works perfectly? It's not doing too badly though, certainly not the farce that some legal systems are. Our laws are less ambiguous than some perhaps, less dependent on interpretation, but maybe not, maybe it's just tradition that keeps them more decorous.

The system used here would bore the socks of Americans, very dry, minimum histrionics and no cameras in courtrooms, none at all. Only sketch artists. Judge Judy would be on the dole here.

Pictures, or video of the accused are not permitted to be made public once charges have been laid. Even famous people. Footage taken before that time and reshown must blur the identity of the accused. Only after conviction can images be shown. Some are not even named if doing so can implicate, or endanger connected people, or identify minors. We don't have the same trial by media excesses here so we don't have the opportunities for lawyers to perform as loudly either. Nor really do we have all that many 'traversties' of justice. Some come to light, but overall, not too many. Most whinging is about the leniency of sentencing.

We don't treat a trial as a circus or as a flim flam competition. Smart heads still beat smart mouths when it comes to getting that 'high profile' tag. We have a few that specialize in aggrandizing themselves by taking on the more notorious villains but they don't win often, and they don't get to be Supreme Court Judges. Their main aim is the publicity as the win rate isn't as crucial to their CVs as it appears to be in the States.

Our Judges are appointed by Parliarment, to a permanent position, and can only be turfed out if they're caught in a criminal activity, again, by Parliarment. They don't have any political onus to carry as while governments change, they don't. They are not, as yours seem to be to the uninitiated onlooker, elected for a set term on the popularity of their public performances, but appointed on their history of sheer nous about the minutae of the legal system. Not entirely on their 'win' rates, glib courtroom performances and/or their political affiliations. Some of them are found to be crooks too, but not enough to prove the system wrong

They could still do with a good culling, too many civil and corporate lawyers chasing a buck for comfort, but they don't approach the piranha status of yours quite yet.

 

[Fern]

In NZ Judicial appointments are made by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Attorney-General.

We all have to follow the paths we've created for ourselves. Although it's sad that he felt this required suicide, he could have changed paths. He might even have become a prosecutor - perhaps that would have quieted the ghosts

Oh dear, have we a shrink amongst us.. such empathy.

 

[SifuPhil]

Oh dear, have we a shrink amongst us.. such empathy.

Common-sense, really ... and yes, I was referring to U.S. attorneys. I know NZ has a radically-different legal set-up.