I’ve worked for years as a criminal defense lawyer.  People are always interested in my work and the question they ask most often is: How can you defend someone who’s guilty?

I have to admit, sometimes it’s very difficult.  And I always add that even guilty defendants are entitled to a vigorous defense.  Though people nod in agreement, I can tell it bothers them.  They still ask, “How can you sit next to someone who is guilty of murder and ask a jury to find them not guilty?”  By way of explaining, let me tell you a true story.

I represented an 18 year old man named Paul.  He was married and came home one day to find his wife having sex with another man on the living room couch.  Instead of going after the man, Paul turned on his wife.  He jumped on the couch, choked her around the neck for about ten minutes, and finally killed her.

He was charged with 1st degree murder.  That meant the killing was intentional and also done with “premeditation.”  But didn’t Paul simply “snap” and kill his wife?  Something more like manslaughter?  How could he have premeditated the murder?  The fact that Paul choked her for ten minutes—that was premeditation, the prosecutor said.

Paul chose to go to trial rather than plead guilty.  Even though it was obvious that he killed his wife, it was still his decision to go to trial.  I had to defend someone who’s guilty, but the question arose—what degree of murder was he guilty of?

During the trial, the Medical Examiner testified about the cause of death.  He covered everything that had been in his autopsy report.  But he added something else.  The doctor said the victim had a malformation in her spinal cord such that when Paul started to choke her, she died immediately.  The next ten minutes of choking didn’t make any difference.

Suddenly, the evidence of premeditation disappeared.  The prosecutor thought the ten minutes of choking demonstrated premeditation, but since she was already dead at that point, the continued choking didn’t mean anything—legally.  The jury found Paul guilty of 2nd degree murder, which meant the killing was intentional but not premeditated.

Even though Paul was guilty of a crime, the 2nd degree murder fit the evidence more accurately and was the just result for both the victim and the defendant—don’t you agree?