|
...Literally. Earlier this year, Harvard University informed professors Robert Sullivan and Stephanie Robinson (who are married) that their terms as faculty deans of Winthrop House (a Harvard student dorm) would not be renewed. The reason cited by Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana was: "Over the last few weeks, students and staff have continued to communicate concerns about the climate in Winthrop House to the college. The concerns expressed have been serious and numerous," according to an article on CNN. Sullivan had joined Harvey Weinstein's defense team in January. That decision sparked outrage, protests, and sit ins by Harvard students because...well...we all understand why, right? Sullivan sent an email to students and tutors shortly after the news broke. While I can't find a copy, this article in the Crimson has several excerpts. quote:“It has come to my attention that a few of you have questions and a few others have concerns in regard to my most recent representation,” Sullivan wrote. “I shall take this opportunity to say a word to our community about the nature of criminal defense in the United States.” Which is, one could argue, the attitude one would hope for and expect from a criminal defense attorney. Freshman Hakeem Angulu had this to say, in the Crimson, about Sullivan's decision. quote:“Let me be clear, the point about Harvey Weinstein deserving due process is a straw man argument and is a point that protesters have never disputed,” Angulu said. “The more specific and relevant point that we're trying to make is that Dean Sullivan does not have to provide the representation, and by providing, he is compromising his ability to serve survivors and his house.” Which frames one argument against Sullivan's self-interested (in this case) viewpoint. Complicating matters - by some accounts Sullivan was kind of an rear end in a top hat and not a great dean. So let's debate - were Harvard students right to protest? Was Harvard right to accede to their demands (if that's what Harvard did)? Does every criminal defendant deserve a defense and does that mean lawyers who defend them should not face consequences for doing so? All these things and more are fair game. What is NOT in any way fair game is debate about Weinstein's guilt or innocence or implication that what he is alleged to have done is ok. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jun 7, 2019 |
#
¿
Jun 7, 2019 15:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:48 |
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:Yeah, "let's abolish the adversarial prosecution-defense structure in favor of the judge doing everything and having even more power" is not an obviously superior system. This was the system in Chile for a long time and (surprise) defendants who weren't connected were generally turbo hosed instead of just regular hosed. Adversarial legalism is probably the best of the worst ways (ie: all the rest of the ways) to conduct criminal trials.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 14:17
|
|
|
Can we have a thread rule that we all acknowledge that money grants unequal access to a bunch of things but rehashing that argument is kind of boring so we just accept it as read into the record and focus on other questions? Everyone has a right to a defense lawyer in criminal court. If someone can't afford a defense lawyer, one is appointed for them. It's impractical to suggest that every defendant should have an unlimited government-funded budget to use in their defense - why wouldn't every defendant spend as much as possible? - and it's super problematic to suggest that because not everyone can afford the best lawyers (or any lawyers at all) that no one should be able to pay for their own laywer. For a lot of things the PD's office is probably better than hiring a rando private attorney because the PD will have much more experience, fwiw. I think I remember a thread where actual attorneys were talking about that, from a few years back.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:03
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:If the argument is that justice is impractical then it really calls into question whether we should be putting anyone in jail at all. Probably we should be putting in jail some of the people we put in jail, but not others. Maybe not most of them. edit: For many things it would probably be better to just require the guilty party to make restitution and let society get on with itself. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Jun 11, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:13
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:If the argument is that justice is impractical then it really calls into question whether we should be putting anyone in jail at all. I agree but I don't think allowing people to hire their own laywers if they can afford them rises to the threshold of any of that, though. If PDs are poo poo then we should fix that (I don't think PDs are poo poo, by and large. In at least some juristictions they're paid on the same scale as prosecuters - I want to say California is an example?)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:30
|
|
|
twodot posted:If the lawyer decided to defended the rapist because they think rapists are rad, that would be bad, but within your hypothetical we're just speculating as to the lawyer's motivations. If the lawyer decided to defend a rapist because even rapists are entitled to a defense, would that be good?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:32
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:If they charge so much that only the richest rapists can afford their defense then I am comfortable saying that it isn't their motive. twodot posted:Such a lawyer would be a public defender, so, as I have very consistently been saying, public defenders are good and we should keep them around. "Every client deserves a defense and I like getting paid" seems a consistent set of motivations. It may be mercenary but it's not unethical.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:46
|
|
|
Nevvy Z posted:Seems weird to undermine the premise of the thread like this. Should lawyers NOT want to get paid? Should doctors? Should everyone?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:54
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:It's literally a contradiction. I think that between those two extremes there is a reasonable stance, at least until we hit a post-scarcity state.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:56
|
|
|
twodot posted:If you refuse to defend a client that can't pay you, then you plainly don't believe everyone deserves your defense. You are picking and choosing who gets your defense, and your choices can, should, and will reflect on you personally. Ummm...yes? As far as I understand it, PDs get paid. FWIW I think the Bar requires all lawyers to do a certain number of pro-bono hours, as well, so in theory every lawyer is taking some cases every year that don't pay.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 20:58
|
|
|
In any field there are always so many more clients who can't pay than clients who can. =(
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2019 21:00
|
|
|
Unoriginal Name posted:In what way does removing private funding and publicly funding defense lawyers harm minorities I'm not sure how possible it would be to even remove private funding. You could have a system in which only certain lawyers employed by the government are allowed to argue in court, but you would still presumably have rich people hiring more lawyers to research, investigate, construct arguments, etc, and them present them to the defense counsel to be used in court. And if the stuff turned up by the private lawyers was real and useful and pertinent it would be pretty hosed up for the lawyer appointed by the government to make the best case for their client to say "no, we're not going to use it, because gently caress you richy rich."
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
Leave aside Sullivan for the moment. There are two big problems with saying "social pressure on lawyers who represent clients a community doesn't like is fine and good". The first, and this was brought up earlier in the thread but bears repeating, is that different communities are going to have different standards for that sort of thing and if that's an acceptable ethic, then defendants who don't evoke sympathy are going to suffer. Not just rich assholes, but anyone accused of something heinous whether they're guilty or not. Which leads into the second problem, which is that the community REALLY, REALLY OFTEN gets it wrong and jumps to conclusions that have nothing to do with the truth. Just because someone is accused of a thing doesn't mean they're guilty, or that the details that filter out to the public and get amplified are correct, or even that the thing happened at all (lol Sabrina Erdely). So the more the legal system is insulated from that kind of pressure, IMO, the better.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2019 15:43
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:If communities are going to have different standards, then by definition they will disagree on acceptable ethics so the communities that want to shame lawyers for bad reasons aren't going to agree with your ethic anyway. We're talking about a principle, aren't we? I have no power to compel any community to take any particular stance on this and I wouldn't expect anything to change as a result of us arguing on the forums.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2019 16:00
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:...why??? Maybe asking a different question would help clarify. Why should people make the changes you want to make?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2019 21:28
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:The thread is bizarre because it's a baseless right-wing talking point being used to whitewash the abuses of power committed by a conservative authority figure, distracting the media conversation toward instead trying to prove once and for all that the left are the real amoral villains. Uhh... there is definitely a link to be drawn between Sullivan joining Weinstein's team, student outrage sparking protests and sit-ins, and then Harvard declining to renew his term as dean. If you have sources that give more dirt on the matter then post them, because that should be good reading. But the thread is supposed to be about the general question rather than specifically Sullivan's situation, which just seemed like a good jumping off point.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2019 21:55
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just to make the "more resources" angle clear -- imagine a case with a hundred thousand or so pages of medical records. Not uncommon. Ok but.... whether everyone is required to use a PD or not, what stops someone with the resources from hiring the biglaw firm to do the doc review and evaluation and present the results of that work to the PD? Do you bar public defenders from accepting evidence or materials presented by their clients (seems problematic but idk maybe not?)?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2019 14:19
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:What we could do is manage the scale of the problem. If we put an appropriate amount of money into public social services, public mental health care especially, had a guaranteed jobs program, adequately controlled environmental poisons like lead, etc., on the one hand, and generally reformed our incarceration system with a greater focus on rehabilitation a la the scandinavian model, we could reduce the overall need for public defender services, and with smaller caseloads the existing defenders could do a better job. No disagreement from me on any of that, for sure. VitalSigns posted:If those materials are pertinent to the case, the government should pay for all defendants to have them, so there's no need to spend private money. You guys are breaking my brain a little. As long as money is a thing, whoever has enough money will be able to spend some money on top of whatever the government is spending to get more lawyers and investigators and etc to do things they think will help their case. Whether those things will actually help the case or not is of course not guaranteed which might be the reason the government wouldn't be paying for them. But regardless, people with money are going to use it in that way sometimes. As HA said above, if the problem is framed as "rich people can spend extra resources on..." that is not a solvable problem. But the system can definitely be made better for all defendants.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2019 14:42
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Well what I said was a just legal system is incompatible with the ability of a defendant to spend more money to get better outcomes. If a defendant spends more money and it makes no difference to the outcome then the system is working fine, so I don't see the problem. Sometimes it will make a difference. There is no way to know beforehand - if there was, investigation wouldn't be necessary.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2019 15:44
|
|
|
Ogmius815 posted:Resolving disputes without violence: a necessary evil that wastes money. Something we probably want to do in the most efficient possible way, at least. Which we don't necessarily do now. For example, I'm pretty sure (though I don't have a study at hand to corroberate) that the cost of putting mental health coaches in schools to work with at-risk kids and kids with special needs on coping strategies trades favorably against the gains from keeping some of those kids out of jail.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2019 16:14
|
|
|
Weinstein was charged in New York, FWIW.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 00:48
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Said that sexual assault isn't real and women are making it all up. Said that women are too stupid to reach the same heights in their fields as men and that's why gender disparities exist. Can you link some sources about this? That would certainly be juicy reading.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 15:49
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:I may have confused the So digging into the article MP linked yields the following, apparantly. A professor at Harvard, Ronald Fryer, was under Title IX investigation. This article , which was referenced in the Crimson article MP linked, describes the situation in a little more detail and contains the quotes from Sullivan. Whole article is worth a read but I'll reproduce the quotes here. quote:While Fryer declined to comment on the university’s procedures, his lawyer, Harvard law professor Ronald Sullivan, told me that “this process has been deeply flawed and deeply unfair. … It shows what the current [#MeToo] movement, some blood in the water, and good coaching [of witnesses] can produce.” So it seems Sullivan was deeply critical of the handling of a Title IX complaint against a colleague of his. MP, is that what you had in mind makes him a bad person? edit: Another quote from the article that seems apropos for this thread.. quote:Says one Fryer supporter at Harvard: “There’s a climate of fear of defending Roland. You can’t be seen to be out of line on this. If you defend someone who’s accused, there’s an attitude that you’re perpetuating the system and we’re coming after you next, because you must be guilty too.” edit2: Further edit to add more Sullivan quotes from the article. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jun 14, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 16:11
|
|
stuff with a different Harvard dean
|
Nevvy Z posted:I guess we are just supposed to believe that there is some minimum level of buyable justice that everyone is getting through the PD system and the rich are paying out their rear end because they don't know any better? This seems absurd. Well one thing that has come up in this thread repeatedly is that defendents who have the financial means to pay for their own lawyers are not able to utilize the PD system even if they wanted to so that might color peoples' behavior somewhat.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 16:42
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Do you think it's ever justified to draw conclusions about someone else's likely motivation and then judge them and/or act on those conclusions, even though in principle we ultimately can never really know what's in their heart. The thing is people are REALLY, REALLY BAD at doing this and tend to rush to judgements that are ultimately wrong. When something really inflamatory is involved you can basically forget about people making reasoned decisions about anybody's motives. That is why it is so important to have a culture around legal representation that insulates judges, lawyers, jurers, and etc from those judgements as much as possible.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 20:18
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:If I am right then it doesn't matter if someone else is irrational and wrong about some other situation, they will be irrational and wrong regardless of what I say now. If I am wrong then you should give me reasons that I have misjudged him and not just appeal to the fact that I am human and capable of error because that's not very useful. I am human and capable of error when I am right, and I am still a human and capable of error when I am wrong. The point is not about whether you're right or wrong about a particular person. The point is that people in general, and you in particular but again not the point, are really bad at making these determinations. Even more bad when the subject is emotional. So we ought to have a legal system in which the feels people have about a thing don't impact the course of justice. Everyone who ever joined a lynch mob thought they were doing the right thing and making the right judgement, and that the scumbag lawyer of that scumbag <whatever the person was accused of doing> was just going to get them off and so they'd better use SOCIAL PRESSURE to get the right result. It's not justice when a lynch mob does it and it's not justice when the internet mob does the slacktivist version of that.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 20:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 20:48 |
|
|
But to the point...yes you're actually wrong about whether Sullivan is a scumbag or not, and you can look at his incredibly long history of prior cases as support for that. He's an exemplary defense attorney who has worked for rich and poor clients alike.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2019 20:53
|
|