People sometimes ask me how defense lawyers can represent all those criminals. My first thought is to observe that they are not criminals until they have been convicted of the crime; they are the accused; and then I remind them that no one is going to prison without a defense lawyer. It’s the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. If you like locking up criminals, therefore, you should love defenders.

But then I realize that what I’m thinking is not much of an advertisement for my skills. Love me because I lose cases and my clients get locked up! I figure that you may love me from a pretty far distance if I make that pitch.

I have represented clients in capital murder cases for 14 years. Although I have the utmost sympathy for murder victims and their survivors, I have come to believe that the death penalty cannot be fairly or even-handedly imposed. Too often racial bias, police and prosecutor misconduct by manufacturing evidence of guilt and/or hiding evidence of innocence, confessions extracted by psychological or even physical intimidation, bad forensic evidence, and faulty eyewitness identifications have resulted in the imprisonment and even execution of innocent people. In the last two decades over 140 people on death row have been set free because DNA evidence or confessions by the real killers have proven them innocent. It is a certainty that more innocent people will be executed because there is no scientific evidence to free them. Often courts ignore recantation of testimony by witnesses against the accused. Life without possibility of parole in a maximum security prison will protect society, and we will not risk the horror of executing the innocent.