Is an attorney allowed to turn on their client? Inspired by Yakuza Judgement. Say that Andy the Attorney is potentially representing Dave the defendant. But while they talk, Andy finds Dave to be a repulsive human being who's obviously guilty of the crime. As a good human being, Andy quits being Dave's attorney, and instead airs out all the dirty laundry to the prosecution, to get Dave locked behind bars for good. Are there any consequences for this? Can Andy be charged with anything? Can Dave declare a mistrial? Etc. Edit: I didn't want to give explicit examples, but what if Dave was openly admitting to having committed the crime, and was boasting about committing more crimes as soon as Andy gets him off the hook. At some point, isn't Andy allowed to, as a good Samaritan, turn on Dave? What if Dave was openly boasting about acts of terrorism he was about to commit, etc.. Is Andy forced to be a tool/bystander to Dave's villainy? Is Andy ever allowed to take action against Dave without consequence? Similar to how even therapists are allowed to speak up if their client is dangerous.
Andy would be almost immediately disbarred and might also be held in contempt of court. Andy would be disbarred for reasons including his violations of the duty of confidentiality owed by Andy to his client Dave under Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6 in a context like this one. This would be considered an open and shut blatant violation of one of the highest and most serious ethical obligations that an attorney has, and is neck and neck with the rule against stealing money from your clients as a ground for near automatic disbarment. The clarity and severity of the breach of professional ethics by Andy in this regard (and other aspects such as his fiduciary duties to his clients and duty of zealous and diligent advocacy for his client) leaves no ambiguity regarding the appropriate level of discipline. Andy might be held in contempt of court for reasons including knowingly disrupting a court proceeding in which he was or is an attorney of record. He can't quit representing Dave until the court grants his permission to do so. Dave's trial would probably not go forward or his conviction would be set aside. In all likelihood, a trial with a new prosecutor not exposed to the information would be arranged to avoid the taint of the breach of privilege. This would be because providing the prosecutor with inadmissible evidence taints the ability of the prosecutor to proceed untainted by inadmissible evidence and would constitute ineffective assistance of counsel which is one of the grounds for setting aside a conviction for a violation of the 6th Amendment to the US Constitution, which grants the right to effective counsel. what if Dave was openly admitting to having committed the crime, This is utterly irrelevant. Criminal defense lawyers aren't only or mostly for innocent people, and their main job isn't really to get people acquitted of crimes they committed. Instead, a criminal defense lawyer's job is to hold the prosecution to their duties to prove their case, to force the criminal justice system to comply with civil liberties protections, to prevent convictions of excessive charges for the conduct committed, and finally to secure appropriate sentences for their clients (which usually means negotiating a plea bargain). Criminal defense lawyers prevent defendants from being convicted and sentenced in circumstances where they wouldn't have been convicted or sentenced if they weren't ignorant of the legal system (which most criminal defendants are). what if Dave was . . . was boasting about committing more crimes as soon as Andy gets him off the hook. A vague statement like this does not trigger any right of Dave to take any action differently. It's basically bravado or a statement about his own character in general. What if Dave was openly boasting about acts of terrorism he was about to commit, etc. If he was about to commit an act of terrorism but was thwarted, Andy needs to keep his mouth shut. If Andy knows that Dave is about to imminently commit a specific terrorist act then this very distinct fact pattern raised different issues and belongs in a separate question. The crime-fraud exception to the duty of confidentiality, and the way that an ethical lawyer can take appropriate action in a way that minimizes harm to the client, all involve considerations very different from those in the main question. Is Andy forced to be a tool/bystander to Dave's villainy? Is Andy ever allowed to take action against Dave without consequence? The duty of a lawyer not to use his services to further a crime is also a very distinct fact pattern. But, failing to report imminent unilateral acts by a client in furtherance of a crime or fraud is very different from not using information about a client's past actions or vague future intentions against the client, and is also different from using a lawyer as a tool to commit a crime or fraud. These are three distinct situations. A different analysis applies to each one.
The first thing to keep in mind is that, before appearing on the stand, an expert witness will have given a sworn deposition and delivered a written report of his or her findings. They could expect to be questioned about anything they say under oath that contradicts something else they said under oath. It’s not illegal for an expert to admit they were wrong before, or that there are other facts that support a different conclusion—indeed, a witness on the stand might be obligated to—but it might not do their professional reputation and their credibility with the jury any good, either. In the U.S., the opposing counsel is generally allowed to contact a witness, and take a statement, but may not ask the witness to testify falsely or offer any inducement prohibited by law. (See Supreme Court Rule (SCR) 173/Model Rule (MR) 3.4.) It would certainly be illegal for a witness to take money from both parties in the case without informing them or the court, or to swear that whatever the highest bidder pays them to say is their expert opinion. If this happened under direct examination, the lawyer would probably cut their losses by asking no further questions and getting the witness off the stand. Putting the witness on the stand would give the other side an opportunity to cross-examine them. Grilling your own expert as a hostile witness, even if the judge allowed it, would only make your position seem tendentious. Nothing stops an expert witness from giving testimony that is more helpful to the other side. They are witnesses, not lawyers, and their duty is to tell the truth, not to zealously advocate on behalf of some client.
If a defendant has committed a crime, they would choose to self-represent to ensure that no one else would know about the circumstances of their crime. Although lawyers are ethically bound to not disclose information that would not be in the interest of their client, the decision to breach this duty would be up to the sole discretion of the individual in question. In cases where the exchanged information may used to provide evidence against the client, the lawyer is compelled to disclose the truth to the courts/law enforcement. This is deeply misguided. Criminal defense lawyers usually represent people who are guilty and there is no ethical problem with doing so, nor does this mean that the lawyer will disclose privileged information that is prejudicial to the defendant in the course of the representation. The notion that a lawyer would be compelled to testify against his client to the courts/law enforcement is simply not how the system works. It is true that a lawyer cannot ethically put you on the stand to offer testimony when the lawyer knows that your testimony to the court will be an outright flat lie, and that this lie is your strategy to prevail in your defense, but that is the sole meaningful limitation on what a lawyer can do for you. However, I can't think of a single instance, in which a desire to defend yourself at trial with a lie has caused someone to represent themselves. Usually, someone with that kind of motive will simply lie to their lawyer as well. It never makes sense to represent yourself if you are innocent and want to be acquitted of the charges against you. But, keep in mind that this is a small subset of all criminal defendants. Criminal defendants are overwhelmingly guilty of something. Usually, a criminal defense lawyer works to either exploit prosecution mistakes or lack of knowledge that prevent the prosecution from proving that guilt, or work to make sure that the defendant is not convicted of a more serious crime than the one committed, and/or work to see to it that their client does not receive an unnecessarily harsh sentence when alternatives are available. In real life, people represent usually themselves, either because they are denied access to counsel (which can be done in a criminal cases where the prosecutor waives the right to seek incarceration as a sentence), or because they are "crazy". Many people who represent themselves in a criminal cases do so because they want to proudly claim that they committed the crime as a means of obtaining of forum for public recognition of what they believe was righteous action even if this could lead to their death. Many terrorists, domestic and foreign, fall into this category. For example, the fellow committed a massacre at a Colorado abortion clinic tried to do this (if I recall correctly, he was later found incompetent to face a trial and has been committed to a mental institution until he becomes competent, if ever). Other people represent themselves out of a strongly felt guilt that they feel a moral duty to confess to, even if this means that they will face severe punishment for doing so. One subset of this group of people are people known as "death penalty volunteers" who try to get sentenced to death and try to waive all appeals and post-trial review. Sometimes they also plead guilty in the belief (often, but not always, inaccurate) that their swift guilty plea when they aren't actually guilty will protect someone else whom they know to be actually guilty. Other people represent themselves because they have deeply held, but paranoid and inaccurate views about the legal system such as members of the "Sovereign Citizens Movement" who think that if they say the "magic words" that they cannot be convicted and that lawyers are a part of a conspiracy designed to prevent them from doing so. Another situation that comes up is when an affluent person who is not entitled to a public defender as a result, chooses to represent themselves, usually with respect to a fairly minor charge like a traffic violation that carries a risk for a short term of incarceration, to save money. But, this is rarely a wise choice. But, unless you plan on pleading guilty or being found guilty at trial, self-representation does not make sense, and even if you plan on pleading guilty, a lawyer is usually worth it. For example, even if the direct consequence of a guilty plea is minor, the collateral consequences of that conviction (e.g. loss of eligibility to work in certain jobs and/or deportation and/or loss of a right to own a firearm) may be consequential and something that a non-lawyer would not realize was happening. Or, maybe you think you are guilty of crime X so there is no point in fighting the charges, but actually, the language of that statute has been defined in a manner that means you are really only guilty of less serious crime Y.
The answer to this question will be almost entirely informed by the why that you've asked us not to consider. If the prosecutor or judge is a witness, the defendant should be able to call them, but that also means they would have to withdraw from the case under either Rule 3.7 or Canon 3. If the defendant believes the prosecution is tainted by some improper motive, the defendant may raise that objection under Crim. R. 12, but he must do so pretrial. I can't think of any circumstances where the defendant could question the judge or prosecutor in the jury's presence.
Charlie may or may not be guilty of murder or of attempted murder. It depends upon his intent and knowledge, which the question doesn't flesh out sufficiently to evaluate. Why did Charlie bodyslam Bob? The reason matters a lot. Did Charlie know that the building was on fire? Was Charlie trying to kill Bob? Was the thing that Bob knocked his head upon an intended result of the bodyslam, or an intervening cause? Did Charlie's initially less culpable act and his knowledge combine to create a duty to rescue and what offense (probably not murder) would it be if a death resulted from a failure to rescue? Alice is likely to be guilty of murder, but on a felony-murder theory, rather than on a transferred intent theory. In most, but not all, states if you are in the process of committing one of an enumerated list of specific felonies that pose a high risk of serious injury or death, such as arson, you are guilty of murder in the event that anyone (even a co-conspirator) dies as a result of your felonious course of conduct, whether or not you intended that a death result. Alice might have been able to purge her felony-murder liability if she had tried to put out the fire and save Bob once she realized that he was in danger, under the exception to felony-murder for renunciation of a course of felonious conduct, but she didn't even try. The doctrine of transferred intent in a murder case usually applies when you intent to kill one person and instead end up killing someone else. But, Alice didn't intend to kill anyway, so this doctrine does not apply. Alice's best defense would be that the death was a result of the attack by Charlie, rather than by the fire, which she would merely have to establish a reasonable doubt regarding. But, ultimately that would be a weak defense for her.
The defense has an opportunity to question the witness the prosecution had called to provide foundation for the evidence, and in this case the defense's perspective is that the prosecution was trying to introduce evidence that they had improperly digitally manipulated. Part of their questioning was trying to figure out how the witness had manipulated the image prior to offering it as evidence. It's the prosecution's burden to prove that the evidence they are offering is accurate, the defense's purpose in asking the witness questions he could not answer is to try to prove to the judge that the prosecution has not laid proper foundation for the evidence because it has been manipulated from its original form in a way the prosecution cannot explain or justify as remaining fair and accurate to the events captured by the original footage. This case in particular had a lot of video evidence, and most of these issues were handled in motions in limine before the trial started. However, the drone evidence in question was dropped at the prosecutor's office after the trial started, so the prosecution did not really have time to hire and voir dire an expert witness on Amped 5 (keeping in mind that the defense similarly had little time to review and account for the new evidence in the middle of trial). Since the defense in this case were cross-examining the witness, they have some leeway to present an argument with their questioning like they chose to do with the red/blue pixel drawings. As I recall the judge allowed the evidence as-is, so it does not appear that the defense's arguments were persuasive to the judge.
This is actually a very complicated question, about (1) the scope of "knowingly", (2) what kind of "intent" is required for conviction, (3) how does the jury understand and evaluate concepts of intent and (4) how does an attorney persuade the jury that the situation does or does not satisfy the particular intent requirement. One thing we can dispose of quickly is the possibility that the law says that the accused has to actually know that the act is against the law. It is a standard legal fiction (2,400 years old) that the accused knows the law, or should have known. As for the 4th element, persuasion, on the strong side we have statements of intent by the accused – "And I pulled out my rifle and blew his head off, and I laughed the whole time". What the jury has to decide is whether the accused had in mind a conscious purpose of doing some act (that is, it wasn't just an accident like butt-dialing, or an instant stimulus-response reaction to some event). "Intent" generally falls in the realm of acting "purposely", which the Model Penal Code §2.02 defines as: A person acts purposely with respect to a material element of an offense when: (i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result thereof, it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result; and (ii) if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist. which more or less means what you think "with intent" means. That doesn't say what they intended to do, it just distinguishes intent from negligence and accident. The prosecutor would then present factual evidence that the accused had a bad intent, like showing that he actually made an attempt to access credit card account data (that such data had been accessed when he broke into the system), etc. We can sort of dispose of the other scope question about "knowingly", namely, what things would he have to know? The chunk accessing a protected computer without authorization can be interpreted in a number of ways, having to do with which elements of the clause are known to the accused. You might know that you were accessing but not know that you were unauthorized; you might know that you were accessing and unauthorized, but not know that the computer is protected. The only reliable way to know which is which is to study the case law on a statute and see if there is a controlling decision that say e.g. that you have to know that you are accessing and are unauthorized, but you don't have to know that the computer is protected. I haven't determined (yet) is there is decisive case law on this, but I'm betting that the outcome would be that not knowing of the protected status of a computer carries no weight. As for what kind of intent, there is a distinction between "specific intent" and "general intent". The distinction comes down to having some evil purpose like "make him suffer" (general intent) versus a specific evil purpose like "kill him". Finally, the people who actually decide, the jury, will be given instructions that say what they have to look for. Here is the tip of the tip of the iceberg, from California's criminal jury instructions. The judge will say... The People must prove not only that the defendant did the acts charged, but also that (he/she) acted with a particular (intent/ [and/or] mental state). The instruction for (the/each) crime [and allegation] explains the (intent/ [and/or] mental state) required. A[n] (intent/ [and/or] mental state) may be proved by circumstantial evidence. Before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to conclude that a fact necessary to find the defendant guilty has been proved, you must be convinced that the People have proved each fact essential to that conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to conclude that the defendant had the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state), you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that the defendant had the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state). If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonable conclusions supports a finding that the defendant did have the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state) and another reasonable conclusion supports a finding that the defendant did not, you must conclude that the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state) was not proved by the circumstantial evidence. However, when considering circumstantial evidence, you must accept only reasonable conclusions and reject any that are unreasonable. and then there will be some specific elaboration of whether they have to find that the accused just generally intended to do bad, versus intended to specifically defraud.
Desuetude is the wrong concept. Desuetude relates to laws as a whole falling out of use; it doesn’t relate to individual cases. There is no question that the UK actively enforces their bail laws so they are not falling out of use. There is a statute of limitations that applies to non-major crimes within which the state must initiate prosecution. However, in this case the prosecution for bail violation has been initiated and Mr Assange is “on the run” so this is not relevant. Neither is the fact that the original charges that led to his arrest has been dropped- he is wanted for escaping lawful custody under English law for which the penalty is pretty stiff. I will also venture an opinion that the case against him is as open and shut as it comes. TL;DR When he dies.