• HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    This is… Very confused.

    You need to give more information before anyone can even make sense of this question. A public defender isn’t a prosecutor; they don’t have the ability to have anyone arrested, or prosecuted. The defendant is the client of the public defender, and the public defender is bound by professional ethics to act in the best interests of their client. The public defender is bound by attorney-client privilege, and anything that they were to disclose to the prosecutor would be inadmissible, and potentially grounds to see them sanctioned or disbarred.

    So I really can’t understand any circumstances here where a defense attorney would be pressuring their client to take a bad deal and somehow threatening their client’s mother.

    • wildcardology@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I can see it happening, clearly the brother don’t know anything about the law. Public defenders have a lot of cases dumped into them overwhelming them. One of the first thing they advice clients is to take a plea deal, maybe the brother is pushing back against it so he/she resulted in blackmail about jailing the mother. It’s still shitty of the public defender to do.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        But the defender has absolutely no power to jail the mother. Effective threats and blackmail require you to have some kind of ability to follow through on some level, and a public defender doesn’t.

        Moreover, there are very few that would, since attempting to do that to a client would likely be some form of gross misconduct that could get you sanctioned or disbarred.

        • wildcardology@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          That’s why he’s banking on the brother to not know that. Besides it’s the brother’s words against the public defender’s.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            That scenario is so improbable that, without any evidence other than an incoherent post on NSQ, no one can reasonably claim that’s what’s going on.

            • wildcardology@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Ok, I get it now. You’re on the side that public defenders cannot do anything shady.

              The brother is alleging that the public defender threatened him that he will jail his mother if he doesn’t take the plea deal. Is that really improbable?

              The fastest way for a case resolution is for the defendant to take a plea deal. That’s a minimum of one day of work. A trial can take weeks or even months. Like I said public defenders are overworked and under paid. They want the cases assigned to them done quickly.

              Add. Public defenders cannot pick and choose cases. Once a case is assigned to them they have to take it even if they still have ongoing cases.

              • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                3 months ago

                Is that really improbable?

                Yes, it really is.

                Public defenders do what they do because they love it, and they believe that it’s important. Pretty much everyone that works as a public defender could make far, far more money in private practice, with a much lighter case load. These are largely people that are ideologically motivated. So yes, it’s highly improbable that a public defender is not only going to fuck their client over–which would be a breach of their ethical duty already–but would then go on to commit an offense that could see them disbarred.

                They may not always be effective due to their caseloads, but it would be very rare to find one that’s malicious.