Lacrosse ugliness at U.Va.

Yea, but I like my odds.

 

Me, too.

But, hey, I think it's worth at least hearing it through. This is America.

 

The choices here seem to be life imprisonment or death, and even the Huguely family seems to know that. There have been numerous times through the course of this case when the victim's family has requested or pleaded for something, such as this time with the mom asking not to release the medical records, and those requests have gone unheeded and the pain has gone unrecognized by the Huguely family, the defense attorneys and now the expert witnesses.

All of these steps are permissible by law. But it is also fair game for people to look at each step as a measure of the character of the people involved.

 

My world just doesn't divide this easily into heroes and villains. It just doesn't. I wish it did. Would be easier that way.

Remember: People judge you - harshly - for what you for a living, as well. Just keep that in mind.

 

Re my law about common ground (thanks machine head!), I actually agree with Dick. Our legal system is no better than a banana republic's without lawyers willing to fight an unpopular fight

 

Mark it down:

December 17, 2010.

Someone agrees with me on SportsJournalists.com.

 

I could do without you personalizing this whole debate, but I'd be pretty comfortable with anybody's judgment about what I've done for a living and whether it compromises me morally.

 

I'm not meaning to personalize it. I was actually trying to generalize it.

I'm saying that people think sports journalists - and journalists in general - are morally compromised, as well. Go on some college message boards sometime. They think we're the scum of the earth. But we think what we do is honorable.

Why shouldn't defense attorneys feel the same?

 

I would put defending an admitted scumbag right up there with having to knock on the door of a grieving family asking if they would like to talk about their loved one. I know one is extremely gut wrenching and I imagine the other is just as difficult. In both cases, people will view the actions as unseemly, others will deal with it by saying they are doing their jobs.
I figure lawyers in these cases figure the only way the constitution is truly valid is if we give even the worst offenders their day in court, in front of a jury and a judge.

 

The amount of vitriol on this thread for the job the defense lawyers are doing just astounds me. It is, without a doubt, a difficult job to stand up and defend the indefensible. Most of the lawyers who do it, do so out of a deep conviction in the idea that everyman deserves a fair trial, no matter how heinous the act of which he's been accused. If your life, or the life of someone you loved, hung in the balance, you would want the best defense attorneys available. I can't begrudge the Huguely's for seeking just that; and I can't begrudge their attorneys for rigorously defending their client. It's their ethical duty.

What appears to be happening are a number of attacks on the state's case in an effort to improve the defense's plea bargaining position. It sounds as though the defense has already built a decent case for an alternative explanation of death than the medical examiner's blunt force trauma ruling. Access to additional medical records may help strengthen that case. The backpedaling the medical examiner apparently did on the stand this week is disconcerting:

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2010/dec/15/huguely-lawyers-mounting-alternative-death-explana-ar-719063/

Showing that her death was a result of a combination of the beating Huguely allegedly gave, the side-effects of adderall and/or other pre-existing conditions doesn't absolve him of responsibility for her death. But it may mean that his responsibility is something more in between voluntary manslaughter and second-degree murder than between first-degree and capital murder.

 

I dug up my old post from this thread.

I'm not sure if "I went to beat her up, and she died because of Adderall" is a defense for murder either.

 

The beating he "allegedly" gave? Really, allegedly. Holy Fuck.