While decent people are outraged by prosecutorial lying, no one even bats an eyelash when defense counsel spin their yarns. It's what they do. The basics are easy: The client is almost always guilty; telling the truth is thus the fast road to jail; therefore make something up. That's how it works. Whether it should work that way is another matter, but that is for a different entry.
This is by way of introducing today's AP story about the Jihadist who attempted, but was foiled at, mass murder on a French train. Kent wrote about it here and here. The would-be killer, Ayoub El-Khazzani, has now lawyered up. Counsel's name is Sophie David, and this is what she has to say:
"He is dumbfounded that his action is being characterized as terrorism," said [Ms.] David, a lawyer in Arras, where the train was rerouted to arrest El-Khazzani -- now being questioned outside Paris by anti-terrorism police.
He described himself as homeless and David said she had "no doubt" this was true, saying he was "very, very thin" as if suffering from malnutrition and "with a very wild look in his eyes."
For sure. When you're homeless, the thing to do is grab an assault rifle and go to town. Why would anyone think otherwise?
But wait, there's more.
But wait, there's more.
Ms. Sophie continued:
"He thought of a hold-up to be able to feed himself, to have money," she said on BFM-TV, then "shoot out a window and jump out to escape."
She said her client told her he had found the valise full of weapons, including the box cutter and rounds of ammunition, in a Brussels public park near the train station.
Ordinarily, I would say you can't make this up. The truth, though, is that you can only make it up. I do wonder if defense lawyers ever think of just saying, "Let's try this case in court" -- and the smarter ones do -- but this is yet another instance where I'm compelled to confess that, being mostly a conventional man, I never had what it takes to sit on the other side of the courtroom.
P.S. Actually, when I was in my last semester in law school, I interned at the local public defender's office, in the juvenile offenders unit. My first client told me that he found the quite nice new TV he had "in a public park."
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