I love your war lawyer stories
@WheatenLover! More, please!
One time, and only once, I had a client on appeal. He told me he did the crime, did the time, and he didn't want to appeal because of that.
BTW, a lawyer never asks whether the client is factually guilty. I don't, because it doesn't matter. Sometimes clients will tell me that they are guilty. It doesn't matter because the prosecutor has to prove their case, and the clients are legally (not necessarily factually) innocent.
The worst case I had was when two parents were charged with child abuse -- the infant had 31 bones broken, in different stages of healing. They both said they did not know who did it, and the baby had been with a sitter a few times. There was no direct proof of who did it. My client was the husband. In the end, neither of them were convicted, but the baby was taken from them to live with her grandparents. I thought my client was factually innocent -- he had a full-time job and was going to college at night, and tons of people sent letters to the judge vouching for his character. The other lawyer thought the wife was factually innocent.
That case was a mess because the prosecutor couldn't prove any element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The husband left the wife, and the wife moved to another state. I decided never to take another case in which the victim was a child. It was just too heartbreaking. There are plenty of lawyers out there who will take those cases, so it isn't like I left a bunch of battered or murdered kids in the lurch. I would never do that.
Luckily, I never had another case like that.