They’re in a bind with severely limited options. I’ve never had a client focus on a single avenue towards acquittal, they’ll take whatever they can get. They’ll switch focus from witness credibility, wrong first name on traffic ticket, filing deadlines missed by prosecutor, constitutional law argument they found on youtube, pretending to have a mental illness, or MARRYING a witness while in jail under the theory that spousal privilege somehow would prevent them from testifying (this happened!), etc.
Whether or not they seem me as ‘trustworthy’ is a question with multiple dimensions. If they don’t trust me to work hard on their case, I can prove otherwise by actually taking their Dick Bottoms leads seriously but that’s generally the opposite of what they want. I can also prove otherwise by researching legal remedies but they get pissed if I don’t reach the “right” answer. What it tends to boil down to is that they don’t trust me to be their criminal co-conspirator, like with clients who (coyly) ask me to threaten witnesses on their behalf or otherwise tamper with evidence somehow.
Generally I’m a fungible component of the system and the sociopathic bunch have no reason to care about what happens to me specifically (I don’t fault them for that) which is why I describe this as pure manipulation attempts.
Thanks, that’s not how I would have though of it on my own, I learnt a lot :-) Marrying a witness is crazy (I assume they didn’t go through with it, but, huh… was the witness okay with the idea of getting married, or just what the …)
They did go through with it! And yeah they were already dating so she was cool with it. At first he was beaming because he thought his case would get thrown out soon enough, but I had to explain to him that spousal privilege does not apply retroactively, but even if it did it would only have protected communications made between each other and not events either would have independently witnessed. He looked earnestly surprised and crushed, and of course he didn’t tell me his scheme beforehand because he know I would have told him it was idiotic.
That’s surprising and I think I must be missing some context. Random Googling seems to suggest that spousal testimonial privilege applies to events before the marriage, at least in federal court—if he did legally marry his girlfriend, she shouldn’t have had to testify at his trial if she didn’t want to. Different states do treat spousal privilege differently, though, but am I missing something else? Did the police learn something from the girlfriend before the marriage that the prosecution can use in court without having her testify?
It depends on the jurisdiction. Some states only recognize “marital communications” privilege which means whatever is going to be barred has to be something that was disclosed within the sanctity of wedded communications. States also differ on whether the privilege must be raised by the witness or by the defendant.
Ah. It turns out that I was mistaken in thinking that the 5th Amendment guaranteed the right to refuse to testify against one’s spouse; the text of the amendment doesn’t mention spouses at all. (Mandela effect strikes again?)
They’re in a bind with severely limited options. I’ve never had a client focus on a single avenue towards acquittal, they’ll take whatever they can get. They’ll switch focus from witness credibility, wrong first name on traffic ticket, filing deadlines missed by prosecutor, constitutional law argument they found on youtube, pretending to have a mental illness, or MARRYING a witness while in jail under the theory that spousal privilege somehow would prevent them from testifying (this happened!), etc.
Whether or not they seem me as ‘trustworthy’ is a question with multiple dimensions. If they don’t trust me to work hard on their case, I can prove otherwise by actually taking their Dick Bottoms leads seriously but that’s generally the opposite of what they want. I can also prove otherwise by researching legal remedies but they get pissed if I don’t reach the “right” answer. What it tends to boil down to is that they don’t trust me to be their criminal co-conspirator, like with clients who (coyly) ask me to threaten witnesses on their behalf or otherwise tamper with evidence somehow.
Generally I’m a fungible component of the system and the sociopathic bunch have no reason to care about what happens to me specifically (I don’t fault them for that) which is why I describe this as pure manipulation attempts.
Yeah, as a certain TV character said, they don’t want a criminal lawyer, they want a criminal lawyer.
Thanks, that’s not how I would have though of it on my own, I learnt a lot :-) Marrying a witness is crazy (I assume they didn’t go through with it, but, huh… was the witness okay with the idea of getting married, or just what the …)
They did go through with it! And yeah they were already dating so she was cool with it. At first he was beaming because he thought his case would get thrown out soon enough, but I had to explain to him that spousal privilege does not apply retroactively, but even if it did it would only have protected communications made between each other and not events either would have independently witnessed. He looked earnestly surprised and crushed, and of course he didn’t tell me his scheme beforehand because he know I would have told him it was idiotic.
That’s surprising and I think I must be missing some context. Random Googling seems to suggest that spousal testimonial privilege applies to events before the marriage, at least in federal court—if he did legally marry his girlfriend, she shouldn’t have had to testify at his trial if she didn’t want to. Different states do treat spousal privilege differently, though, but am I missing something else? Did the police learn something from the girlfriend before the marriage that the prosecution can use in court without having her testify?
It depends on the jurisdiction. Some states only recognize “marital communications” privilege which means whatever is going to be barred has to be something that was disclosed within the sanctity of wedded communications. States also differ on whether the privilege must be raised by the witness or by the defendant.
Ah. It turns out that I was mistaken in thinking that the 5th Amendment guaranteed the right to refuse to testify against one’s spouse; the text of the amendment doesn’t mention spouses at all. (Mandela effect strikes again?)