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: Begging the Question

The post wherein I ask you to support my point of view, just so I can feel like I'm right

By "Milbarge" and "Fitz-Hume"

Let's pretend I do criminal cases. Let's further pretend that a non-lawyer (let's say, a student intern) is personally familiar with a defendant and the victim. As in, he used to hang out with Defendant when he was younger. You know, before Defendant murdered his (the defendant's, not the intern's) dad.

When the case got to us, Pretend Intern wanted to be very involved. I personally thought it was somehow inappropriate, although I suppose anyone could find out the same stuff by attending the trial. I couldn't really articulate a good reason for him not to have any involvement whatsoever and I wasn't the attorney on the case, so I didn't have a lot of pull there.

So we get the stuff in, and when he saw the crime scene photos, he got really upset. Gee, surprising? I tried to convey my concerns about him getting upset beforehand to the attorney handling the case, but he brushed me off. Even after witnessing the Pretend Intern getting upset, he still didn't think that perhaps it wasn't a good idea to let him handle this stuff. I mean, nobody (except maybe necrophiliacs) really likes seeing dead bodies, and I imagine it's even worse when it's someone you know.

I was kind of mad at the attorney for not being more proactive. I felt like he should not have let Pretend Intern look at the stuff, and/or not keep him on the case, and/or at least prepared him for looking at the stuff. I opined at great length with colleagues, and nobody really sided with me. Some thought the intern knew what he was getting into and that he was a grownup and that he chose to look at the file, knowing that it was a murder. Some thought that the attorney didn't have a responsibility to try to shield Pretend Intern.

Maybe I'm just too hard on this attorney because he irritates me on a regular basis. Maybe I'm being hypercritical because I'm not overly fond of this attorney or maybe I have a right to feel like he should have done something. I don't know what, but something. Or maybe I should just mind my own business.

Full post as published by Begging the Question on August 19, 2009 (boomark / email).