MILKSOP Chapter 43

Justice is Blindfolded
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Because of the type of law his new partners had practiced in the past, Archie found himself with a criminal defense department.

He himself had never participated in the defense of an accused so this was a new experience for him.

He had a lot of questions for his partners about the procedure in preparation for the trial, and he was told it starts long before they ever get into court.

The main defense attorney said, “It isn't about guilt or innocence but what you can get the jury to believe.  

There are a thousand ways to approach this depending on the severity of the crime.  

One of the main weapons is to deflect the guilt onto someone or something else but the main thing is to adjudicate the matter in favor of your client.

To you the client is always innocent regardless of the evidence against him, and there are always extenuating circumstances.  

It is up to the attorney to discover what they are and present them to the jury.  

 

It doesn't matter if it is true or not for what we are dealing with is law not justice.  The law allows you to go to the edge of perjury but not beyond it.

Another issue is how to handle the objections of the prosecuting attorney. Always be ready to answer any and all objections.

There is something distasteful about defending people who are guilty, but in order for the system of law to work there must be someone on the side of the accused and besides, there is a lot of money to be made by doing that.  

The better you are in defending these perpetrators of evil, the more you make.”

Archie satisfied himself by not being directly involved in that phase of their services. 

 

He thought, “What a contradiction to believe in living righteously and putting your moral values aside to try to lessen the responsibility for doing wrong, even murder I suppose.”

He thought, “The Defense attorney must believe that it is all for the greater good and ultimately someone must do this.”

Archie was actually practicing very little law, because he was tied up in meetings with the city fathers and business people trying to establish his firm as one of the major players in the Huston area.

This was proving to be a difficult task. Some of the firms had been there for a hundred years and the main people had been involved with each other since grade school through college.

So far most of there Mergers and Acquisition deals had been small; stuff that the major firms didn't want to fool with.  

It was common practice for the larger deals to be deferred to New York or Chicago and for the locals to be a minor player.

 
After racking his brain for a few months without too much success he asked Marcy what she thought about this problem.

Marcy had worked in the New York office for several years and had seen how they worked there and had observed their success.

She didn't answer right away, and he thought maybe she wasn't paying attention to him and was thinking about some real estate deal she was working on.  

After a while she said, “You can't take them on head on. You have to be a little more subtle than that.  

First thing I would advise is to hire someone who knows his way around in the business world of Huston, and have him keep his ear to the ground and find out when anyone is entertaining the idea of merging with another company.  

Perhaps someone who is alienated from the major players here.  You need someone who has a grudge against them, and would like to get even with them in some small measure.

Then you must approach the prospects and ask them if they would consider using a firm with New York experience to handle the deal for them.  Then give them a list of successful deals you have worked on."

As they talked on into the late hours he began to see what he had been doing wrong, and developed a new plan going forward.   

To be Continued