A Lawyer

"Better that one hundred guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

The book I'm reading this week is the Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly.  It focuses around a defense attorney Michael Haller who works in L.A.  Now normally the word defense attorney brings up thoughts like jerk, con man, liar, cheater, scum, criminal, etc, and they're all possibly true.  Essentially Michael admits in the first few chapters that his job is to "exploit the cracks in the
prosecution’s arguments, guilty doesn't matter what matters is can they prove you're guilty."  Ya sounds like a great guy I know.  Now in fairness it's true that a person is innocent until proven guilty (at least in theory) but what he does isn't so much fight for the innocent (he even admits he's never had an innocent client and he's not sure if he'd recognize one if they came to him)  but fight for the guilty to become less guilty.  He exploits the flaws in the system to win the guilty freedom, again I know sounds like a great guy and I'll admit few chapters in my first thought was "I'm going to hate this guy."  But then I kept reading and began to see some things his way.  The prosecution has rules they must follow and if they or the cops break these rules then they must be held accountable, even if that means a guilty man goes free because if they're not held accountable then maybe an innocent man goes to jail for a crime he didn't commit and why? because the police cut corners? wheres the justice in that? and that's the truth and becomes a fact in the book.  A rich guy, Louis Ross Roulet, is accused of assault, battery, attempted rape, the works and he says he didn't do it.  Lemmie guess your first thought is ya and I'm the king of England.  Well Michael takes the case because the guys rich and that means big money.  He meets with Louis and asks what happened that night and Louis tells him that he was setup by a girl and the story sounds to strange to be true but at Michael digs deeper he discovers Louis may actually be telling the truth and it scares him.  It scares him because there is no client scarier than an innocent man, because then there's no plea bargain, no deal, the only thing that can pass is a not guilty and if a lawyer defending the guilty man doesn't get a not guilty and that man goes to jail for the rest of his life then that lawyer will forever know it's his fault he's in there.  And truly why I don't hate this Michael character yet. I mean ya he defends the guilty and uses loopholes to set them free but he understands that if a man is innocent then he has to do everything in his power to keep him from going to jail because that's how the system is suppose to work.  And that's all I've got for now so until next time see you at the beginning...................