What will come out of the Florida election madness? Do you have a claim for or against witchcraft? There will be lawyers who will represent you. Do you claim that the world is flat? There will be lawyers who will
What will come out of the Florida election madness? Do you have a claim for or against witchcraft? There will be lawyers who will represent you. Do you claim that the world is flat? There will be lawyers who will represent you. Whatever you claim, no matter how outrageous, there will be lawyers who will represent you. Most assuredly.
For a fee, a lawyer will defend you even if he inwardly believes you to be guilty. Only in the movies do we find Matlocks and Perry Masons.
True, in America guilt must be proven, since you are presumed to be innocent. But what if guilt is so obvious that it is beyond question?
How does a lawyer appear, then, when the whole world believes his client to be guilty? Of course, they will know that he’s only in it for the money.
I say, therefore, that public opinion can affect only his case, never his conscience. I am not including the smalltown lawyer who wants only to come to the aid of his neighbors, and who will probably never get rich. I speak only of the big guys, such as the defenders of O.J., and the high-priced bunch now in Florida. I think it was David Letterman who said that now would be a good time for a hurricane there.
Still, as much as I hate to admit it, we need lawyers. We should all be grateful for the American way, even if it stretches our collective patience sometimes and leaves gaping holes in our sense of logic. Without lawyers, we could easily be led to the slaughter.
In some countries, a thief can be recognized by the absence of a hand or an ear. He didn’t have a lawyer, you see. Needless to say, rape cases are rare in those areas.
According to Paul Harvey, there was a time in America when the word lawyer was an obscene utterance in the American vocabulary. “Dirty crook” carried less stigma than “lawyer.” Come to that, even dirty crooks have lawyers.
And now we are at the eve of perhaps the saddest day ever in American political history. We are soon to be blessed – or cursed – with a new president. But it won’t be the people who will have put him there. It will be lawyers.
ERNEST PERRY, Kapa’a
