any society that requires ‘payment’ in order to determine the guilt or innocence of a person and give him due process, is fundamentally flawed. does a person’s innocence or guilt depend on how much money they have? that’s one of the most ridiculous things i’ve ever heard… and i’ve heard a lot of ridiculous things. the problem is, it is believed that the facts of a crime are explained, better or worse, according to the rhetorical skills of those who examine it. so that for example, a crime might not be ‘that bad’ if an examiner is able to produce mitigating factors and persuade a judge/jury of them. but this begs the question; either those factors exists, or do not, and an examination of them should not depend on the competence of the examiner. so this translates to; if you hire lawyer x, your crime is only kinda bad… but if you hire lawyer y, your crime is very bad. see what i’m getting at? the nature of the crime has nothing to do with who articulates it, and remains the same regardless of how it is explained. but because of our particular kind of criminal justice system, ‘justice’ is an arbitrary concept that depends solely on the degree of pathos, ethos and logos (it should only consist of logos) used in the art of rhetorical persuasion. and the more money you have, the better your chances of getting someone skilled at these things to defend you. the point is, the legal procedure should not depend on this.
i’ve never paid for a lawyer in my life, and never will. in all three sets of felony convictions - first set was six felonies, second set was two felonies, third set was three felonies (only two felonies of which i actually committed) - i had a court appointed attorney. but these aren’t free, either, and cost about as much as a private lawyer. i owe somewhere around six or seven thousand dollars in two states, all combined, which i will never pay willingly (state can garnish wages and raise taxes to get that money, though).
court appointed attorneys are usually paralegals, one time prosecutors, or failed private practice lawyers who work for the state for a steady paycheck. like the prosecutors, they are opportunists motivated by personal profit. the practice of law is, for them, like a sport. what these attorneys do is make deals with prosecutors behind closed doors. they work together and are not rivals. that’s just an appearance. the prosecutors goal is to increase his conviction rates… while the defenders goal is to increase his not-guilty verdicts and/or his plea-deal rates. so what they do is ‘trade off’ cases. the prosecutor will go easy on defendant x so the defender gets his plea-deal or not guilty verdict… then the defender will let the prosecutor fry defendant y so he can get his conviction. they do each other these favors, and back and forth it goes.
and to answer your question:
“Isn’t it worth years of your life, to simply pay the cost for a good lawyer and defense?”
i look at it another way. this is somewhat difficult to explain, though. i am willing to trade a few years in prison for the privileges i will grant myself for being wrongfully charged and convicted of crimes i did not commit, once i get out… if that makes any sense to you. this is how i make lemonade out of lemons, so to speak.
also consider the dilemma one is put in when facing trial. if i decided to plead ‘not guilty’, and lost, i’d have gotten the maximum sentence… which was around seven years. but if i accept the plea offer for four years, and plead guilty, i only do the four.
this is the blackmail concealed in plea-bargaining. think of it like this; if the prosecutor really believes the defendant should do seven years, then he should not ask the judge to give him only four if the defendant agrees to take the plea offer. what this means is, the prosecutor is more concerned with getting his conviction than he is with serving justice… which would have been to give the defendant seven years. or, the prosecutor doesn’t really think the defendant should get seven years, but artificially increases the sentence… then offers the defendant only four years if he agrees to plead guilty. here, he holds the seven years over the defendants head to scare him into accepting the plea offer.
a lot of defendants play this game, but not me. i will not run the risk of getting a maximum sentence when the piece of shit public defender loses the trial. instead, i’ll plead guilty to crimes i did not commit and do the time. ‘justice’ will be served elsewhere and in another way, you might say.
a superb example of this very thing is what darrow did in the trial of: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb