Below The Beltway

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Why It Sometimes Sucks To Be A Lawyer

by Doug Mataconis @ 1:09 pm on March 7, 2008.

Because, sometimes, you get caught in a gut-wrenching ethical bind:

(CBS) Alton Logan doesn’t understand why two lawyers with proof he didn’t commit murder were legally prevented from helping him. They had their reasons: To save Logan, they would have had to break the cardinal rule of attorney-client privilege to reveal their own client had committed the crime. But Logan had 26 years in prison to try to understand why he was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit.

(…)

awyers Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry were public defenders when their client, Andrew Wilson, admitted to them he had shot-gunned a security guard to death in a 1982 robbery. When a tip led to Logan’s arrest and he went to trial for the crime, the two lawyers were in a bind. They wanted to help Logan but legally couldn’t.

“The rules of conduct for attorneys, it’s very, very clear…. We’re in a position to where we have to maintain client confidentiality, just as a priest would or a doctor would. It’s just a requirement of the law. The system wouldn’t work without it,” says Coventry.

They watched Logan’s trial to see whether he got a life or death sentence. “We thought that somehow we would stop at least the execution,” Coventry tells Simon. “Morally, there’s very little difference and we were torn about that, but in terms of the canons of ethics, there is a difference — you can prevent a death.”

And they’re absolutely right. If they had stepped up and told what they knew they would have violated attorney-client confidentiality and they would have most likely lost their licenses to practice law.

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t bother them:

The lawyers say it was hard on them mentally. “There’s nothing you can say [to Logan],” says Coventry. “It’s been difficult for us. But there’s no comparison whatsoever to what it’s been for this poor guy,” he says “Alton, whether or not you can understand it, we’ve been hurting for you for 26 years,” says Kunz. “How often did I think about it? Probably 250 times a year. I mean I thought about it regularly.”

They have come forward now because their client gave them permission to do so, but only after he died. Without that permission, they still would have been ethically bound to keep silent.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been in a position like these two men have been in for a quarter century, and I hope I never am, but I completely understand why they did what they did.