I am not a lawyer and don’t know (much) more about how this stuff works than the average person. From my perspective, there are pros and cons to a defendant lying to a public defender.
Pros:
Assuming your lie is successful and it earns you sympathy, the public defender might:
Work harder.
Spend some political capital they have access to on your case.
Avoid working against you. Maybe if you don’t explicitly earn their sympathy they’ll be “in bed with the prosecutors” and share what you tell them in confidence with the prosectors in an attempt to get you convicted.
Cons:
Assuming your lie is successful:
The prosecution might realize the truth, and your lawyer will be unprepared to defend you against their arguments.
Assuming your lie is unsuccessful:
The inverse of the “Pros” section, pretty much.
It doesn’t seem to me like “be completely honest with your lawyer” is always the right approach to take. It seems likely that how sympathetic they are to you is very important and I can imagine realistic situations where there are lies you can tell that a) are unlikely to be figured out and b) earn you a lot of sympathy in such a way that the pros probably outweigh the cons.
Separately, there is the question of what is reasonable for the average defendant to expect. Maybe I am wrong, but if I am, it doesn’t seem to me that the average defendant has access to enough information to justifiably expect this. I think they’d need to know much more about a) how court cases work and b) the culture that public defenders are a part of.
There is also the point that being under so much stress, the defendants are probably cognitively impaired in some meaningful way, and so expectations of their ability to reason and make good decisions should be correspondingly lower.
But at the same time… yes, I’m sure that a lot of defendants lie in situations where they are pretty likely to get caught, and where it is pretty clearly a bad idea to do so. My guess is that some form of wishful thinking is what explains this. (“I really, really, really don’t want anyone to know that I touched that gun! Maybe I can just tell the lawyer that I didn’t touch it and no one will ever figure it out.”).
If so, I’d imagine that a big part of the job of a defense attorney would be something along the lines of what therapists do: building rapport, earning trust, developing a “therapeutic alliance”.
I appreciate this systemic approach to analyzing lying! The Pros/Cons depend heavily on the type of lie, and you can split it roughly between “factual lies” and “sympathy lies”. Factual lies are about whether or not this thing did or did not happen, while sympathy lies are used to generate sympathy from others (e.g. “if I get convicted I’ll lose everything”).
Sympathy lies are more likely to be successful, but they’re also not very consequential. It’s possible that it could have an effect at the slimmest of margins, but the risks give it an expected payoff close to zero. The only way I can see this work is if it’s done by the truly sociopathic compulsive liars who can manage to successfully con dozens of people.
Factual lies are meaningless. The evidence either corroborates their claims or it doesn’t. If there’s no corroboration except their word, then they open themselves up to potentially brutal cross-examination. Many many (guilty) defendants have confidently believed they can talk their way out of a situation and failed spectacularly (SBF comes to mind).
And yes, absolutely my job relies heavily on building trust and rapport with my clients. It occupies at least around 80% of my initial conversations with a client.
It sounds like with “factual lies” you’re saying that certain lies are about something that can easily be verified, and thus you’re unlikely to convince other people that you’re being truthful. Is that accurate? If so, that definitely makes sense. It seems like it’s almost always a bad idea to lie in such situations.
Why do you say that sympathy lies are not very consequential (assuming they are successful)? My model is that defendants have a pretty large range for how hard they could work on the case, working harder increases the odds of of winning by a good amount, and how hard they work depends a good amount on how sympathetic they are towards the defendant.
And yes, absolutely my job relies heavily on building trust and rapport with my clients. It occupies at least around 80% of my initial conversations with a client.
Gotcha. Makes sense. It’s interesting how frequently a job that is on it’s surface about X is largely, even mainly about Y. With X being “legal stuff” and Y being “emotional stuff” here (I’m being very hand-wavy).
Another example: I’m a programmer and I think that for programming, X is “writing code” and Y is “empathizing with users and working backwards from their most pressing needs”. In theory there is a division of labor and the product manager deals with the Y, but in practice I’ve found that even in companies that try to do this heavily (smaller, more startup-y companies don’t aim to divide the labor as much), Y is still incredibly important. Probably even more important than X.
It sounds like with “factual lies” you’re saying that certain lies are about something that can easily be verified, and thus you’re unlikely to convince other people that you’re being truthful.
Not necessarily, I was referring to lies about the case itself, and those always have the potential to be exposed by either my investigations or the prosecutor.
Why do you say that sympathy lies are not very consequential (assuming they are successful)? My model is that defendants have a pretty large range for how hard they could work on the case, working harder increases the odds of of winning by a good amount, and how hard they work depends a good amount on how sympathetic they are towards the defendant.
Forgive me for answering with literal walls of text but this essay might explain things better: Eleven Magic Words. Bottom line is that I’m generally useless and any contributions I may bring to the table are almost entirely fungible. This other one of mine also gets into the inherent limitations of my job: Death of a Client.
I am not a lawyer and don’t know (much) more about how this stuff works than the average person. From my perspective, there are pros and cons to a defendant lying to a public defender.
Pros:
Assuming your lie is successful and it earns you sympathy, the public defender might:
Work harder.
Spend some political capital they have access to on your case.
Avoid working against you. Maybe if you don’t explicitly earn their sympathy they’ll be “in bed with the prosecutors” and share what you tell them in confidence with the prosectors in an attempt to get you convicted.
Cons:
Assuming your lie is successful:
The prosecution might realize the truth, and your lawyer will be unprepared to defend you against their arguments.
Assuming your lie is unsuccessful:
The inverse of the “Pros” section, pretty much.
It doesn’t seem to me like “be completely honest with your lawyer” is always the right approach to take. It seems likely that how sympathetic they are to you is very important and I can imagine realistic situations where there are lies you can tell that a) are unlikely to be figured out and b) earn you a lot of sympathy in such a way that the pros probably outweigh the cons.
Separately, there is the question of what is reasonable for the average defendant to expect. Maybe I am wrong, but if I am, it doesn’t seem to me that the average defendant has access to enough information to justifiably expect this. I think they’d need to know much more about a) how court cases work and b) the culture that public defenders are a part of.
There is also the point that being under so much stress, the defendants are probably cognitively impaired in some meaningful way, and so expectations of their ability to reason and make good decisions should be correspondingly lower.
But at the same time… yes, I’m sure that a lot of defendants lie in situations where they are pretty likely to get caught, and where it is pretty clearly a bad idea to do so. My guess is that some form of wishful thinking is what explains this. (“I really, really, really don’t want anyone to know that I touched that gun! Maybe I can just tell the lawyer that I didn’t touch it and no one will ever figure it out.”).
If so, I’d imagine that a big part of the job of a defense attorney would be something along the lines of what therapists do: building rapport, earning trust, developing a “therapeutic alliance”.
I appreciate this systemic approach to analyzing lying! The Pros/Cons depend heavily on the type of lie, and you can split it roughly between “factual lies” and “sympathy lies”. Factual lies are about whether or not this thing did or did not happen, while sympathy lies are used to generate sympathy from others (e.g. “if I get convicted I’ll lose everything”).
Sympathy lies are more likely to be successful, but they’re also not very consequential. It’s possible that it could have an effect at the slimmest of margins, but the risks give it an expected payoff close to zero. The only way I can see this work is if it’s done by the truly sociopathic compulsive liars who can manage to successfully con dozens of people.
Factual lies are meaningless. The evidence either corroborates their claims or it doesn’t. If there’s no corroboration except their word, then they open themselves up to potentially brutal cross-examination. Many many (guilty) defendants have confidently believed they can talk their way out of a situation and failed spectacularly (SBF comes to mind).
And yes, absolutely my job relies heavily on building trust and rapport with my clients. It occupies at least around 80% of my initial conversations with a client.
It sounds like with “factual lies” you’re saying that certain lies are about something that can easily be verified, and thus you’re unlikely to convince other people that you’re being truthful. Is that accurate? If so, that definitely makes sense. It seems like it’s almost always a bad idea to lie in such situations.
Why do you say that sympathy lies are not very consequential (assuming they are successful)? My model is that defendants have a pretty large range for how hard they could work on the case, working harder increases the odds of of winning by a good amount, and how hard they work depends a good amount on how sympathetic they are towards the defendant.
Gotcha. Makes sense. It’s interesting how frequently a job that is on it’s surface about X is largely, even mainly about Y. With X being “legal stuff” and Y being “emotional stuff” here (I’m being very hand-wavy).
Another example: I’m a programmer and I think that for programming, X is “writing code” and Y is “empathizing with users and working backwards from their most pressing needs”. In theory there is a division of labor and the product manager deals with the Y, but in practice I’ve found that even in companies that try to do this heavily (smaller, more startup-y companies don’t aim to divide the labor as much), Y is still incredibly important. Probably even more important than X.
Not necessarily, I was referring to lies about the case itself, and those always have the potential to be exposed by either my investigations or the prosecutor.
Forgive me for answering with literal walls of text but this essay might explain things better: Eleven Magic Words. Bottom line is that I’m generally useless and any contributions I may bring to the table are almost entirely fungible. This other one of mine also gets into the inherent limitations of my job: Death of a Client.