I agree with the defense bar more often than it (and sometimes, I) feel comfortable about, but what can I say? The NACDL is right in believing, among other things, that custodial police questioning should be videotaped, prison conditions improved, and defense lawyers better paid.
Better paid, yes, but not like this.
And before the yelping starts, let me say up front that this is an unusual case for sure -- but no more unusual than the prosecutor's sending some bedeviled defendant away for 50 years by hiding Brady material, something defense blogs portray as an everyday occurrence.
Yes, yes, the great majority of prosecutors and defense lawyers are honest people, so far as I have reason to believe. But it does annoy me when the ideological element of the defense bar gets on its high horse, proclaiming that it alone defends the Constitution, while mean-spirited prosecutors come to their offices aiming to tear it up. The main problem with this stuff is not that it's so false; it's that it's so stultifying.
It was bearing in mind this Holier-than-Thou, We-Are-the-Guardians-of-the-Law attitude that made me laugh when I came to this paragraph in the story about "how defense counsel gets paid:"
The second [client] also knew Benavides from a previous relationship, said the affidavit. During one of her court cases, Benavides approached her and said he knew the judge and could get her an attorney's bond and a fair deal. She hired him, and after she bonded out of jail, Benavides asked her to meet him at a friend's office. Whenever they met there, they would have sex. Once, they had sex in a jury room in the courthouse.
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