News Alec Baldwin Accidentally Shoots & Kills Cinematographer, Wounds Director with Prop Gun

All the arguments against lawyers fall apart when you acknowledge the ones that defend rich people aren’t the only ones to exist.

You know how many poor people, especially in minority groups, have been imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit because they were bullied into a false confession after being tricked into waiving their right to an attorney? Or how many young people (Again mostly minorities) get tossed into for profit private prison systems for minor nonviolent crimes?

Our system incentivizes prosecutors to care more about getting the conviction than ensuring they got the right one.

We don’t need less lawyers, we need to force the ones we have to also defend poor people.

 

The man was obviously in shock.

 

I fully believe in a well-funded and fully trained vigorous public defense system. However, the idea of forcing every attorney to "also defend poor people" falls apart on several bases, from the fact that many attorneys have little, if any, criminal or civil defense training or experience (making them worse than useless to the accused) to fact of Lincoln having freed the slaves.

 

Wagner and Walken both had/have long successful careers after Natalie Wood died. Of course there were only suspicions. In Alec Baldwin's case, he actually shot someone and killed them. No one thinks it was intentional, so he might recover from it, career wise, even if he does do a small spell of legal trouble for it.


to put it in context, this is Alec Baldwin sending a voicemail to his 12 year old daughter about 15 years ago. And yet he became a media darling again a few years later. I'd say he can recover from anything.

 

It’s a little absurd to compare a requirement for attorneys to take on X hours of pro bono cases as a requirement of bar certification to slavery.

If a poor person can not get a competent attorney with a reasonable amount of dedicated time to work on their case, they have not received due process. This requirement would be no different from preventing hospitals from turning people away at the emergency room. Is it “Slavery” to require doctors to give emergency medical treatment to a person who can’t afford it?

We have a mass incarceration problem in the US. And not enough resources to fulfill our constitutional obligations at the volume of cases.

We have three choices:
1. Reduce the case volume to a more manageable size with decriminalization of more minor infractions and investment in alternate interventions.
2. Increase our investment in the resources to be able to offer everyone a real competent advocate with a small enough caseload to give his or her full attention to everyone’s case.
3. Continue to just keep tossing poor people and minorities in prison regardless of guilt, proportionality or necessity without the devoted, competent advocacy guaranteed to them by the constitution.

As long as we choose door #3 I don’t know how we as a society can sleep at night.

 

It's both ironic and incongruous that a cry of slavery is being made at the idea of forcing lawyers to spend some small fraction of their professional time representing the public at no charge to their clients when there's still such a thing as jury duty.

 

People can be excused from jury duty. They also get paid for jury duty when they aren't excused. Not much, but they do get paid.

I thought I made it clear I supported the second of your listed options. But there is a huge difference between the government fulfilling its constitutional duties and setting up a forced labor system.

Criminal cases, especially ones likely to result in an incarcerated defendant are time consuming and complex. While some cases can be resolved with a few hours work (typically a "plea bargained" case), others could require dozens or hundred of hours of effort, not simply a "fraction" of someone's time.

Requiring an attorney (or anyone for that matter) to give up days or weeks of uncompensated and otherwise billable time is arguably a far more onerous requirement than expecting a doctor to act in an emergency. It should probably also be noted that an emergency room doctor is still being compensated by his or her employer (the hospital) whereas a solo attorney has no form of compensation other than billable hours.

Beyond that, the simple fact of the matter is that attorneys in the U.S. tend to specialize. That specialization means that many licensed attorneys, while perhaps highly competent in one area of the law, are simply no longer (if they were ever) sufficiently qualified to provide the necessary zealous representation you and I agree that criminal defendants require. Trial work is a completely different skill set than, for example, transactional real estate practice. Forcing attorneys, as a condition of re-licensure, to take on criminal defense cases for no money is not going accomplish anything but potentially saddling a defendant with an unmotivated and unqualified attorney at time when he or she needs that attorney the most.

 

And?

Public defenders get paid too.

So, the lawyers you force to be on public defender duty every now and then, for the sake of the integrity of the justice system they serve, give them a nominal salary, and it would no longer be "slavery," amiright?

 

Another question is, assuming his career does recover, would he even want to? That incident is going to leave a long lasting psychological mark that he'll have to live with the rest of his life. It's traumatic. It's not something you could effectively jump right back into, like you would getting back onto a horse after being thrown off. I'd imagine a scenario where he would not want to accept a role where he has to directly interact with a gun anymore, in which case it would likely fall to having a stunt double deal with it. I could see him switching over to doing more dramatic roles than action roles.

 

I didn't mean to imply any such thing, I just think it makes sense to have a lawyer present during any official dealings with the police, regardless if one has or has not committed a crime. And last I checked, requesting legal counsel was not sufficient enough grounds to presume guilt, regardless what some might think.

 

Oops. I've made the correction.

 

You didn’t say the exact words, no, but it’s strongly implied.

You imply the same thing here. Baldwin is not at this time “innocent” of committing a crime, although you seem convinced that a crime has been committed. According to police, no determination that a “crime” has been committed has been officially made.. That determination has yet to be made.

Perhaps it is a subconscious belief that a crime has been committed and Baldwin is a suspect who needs a criminal defense. That may become an issue at some point, but it isn’t yet.

 

Yes. They are being compensated for a job they chose to take and, often, make a career out. How is that in any way, shape or form the same as ordering, for example, a real estate attorney to represent a murder suspect for no pay or even a stipend? And how does ordering an unqualified attorney to represent a criminal defendant restore credibility to the criminal justice system any more than just adequately and fairly compensating assigned counsel?

 

Quote to me where I suggested such an absurd thing. And quote to me where I proposed unfairly compensating anybody.

What I did was show that avoiding slavery was a ridiculously low bar. It's so ridiculously low that dragging it into the conversation, as you did, was absurd to begin with. If I implied anything unstated, all I implied was that a) our justice system is unjust because rich people are afforded counsel that poor people can't afford, and b) the compensation that jurors receive is unfair.

 

You seem to think the police operate in some sort of linear manner, in which they always form an opinion that a crime was committed and they then go about rounding up suspects. That is not at all the case. Often they don't reach a determination whether a crime was committed until the interview involved individuals, including potential suspects.

Whether or not a crime has been committed is ultimately a question for the jury. We aren't there yet, obviously.

We are at the point of whether or not there is probable cause (or maybe even just reasonable suspicion) in the minds of the government (in this case, the police) whether the elements of a particular crime (in this case, involuntary manslaughter) have been set forth with sufficient evidence to warrant charging someone.

One of the elements of a crime to which the police seek to determine probable cause is often the mental state (intent, negligence, recklessness, lack of knowledge, etc.) of an individual when he or she committed acts which establish other elements of the suspected (but undetermined) crime. Without the requisite mental state, no crime was committed. Therefore, the police seek to interview involved actors (in the legal, not Hollywood sense) to determine if the mental state supports that a crime was committed. Part of determining mental state is asking an involved actor what he or she did as well as what he or she was thinking at the time.

It is very possible that an involved actor, despite being innocent and lacking the requisite mental state at the time of the acts at issue, may make statements that, inadvertently, give the police cause to believe that person had the requisite mental state, thereby giving the police probable cause that a crime was committed.

The defendant can then be arrested and charged, despite being innocent and despite no crime having been committed.

 

Force: to compel, constrain, or oblige (oneself or someone) to do something; violence, compulsion, or constraint exerted upon or against a person or thing
Spend: to use up or pay out
No: not any; not in any degree or manner;
Charge: the price demanded for something
Professional: of, relating to, or characteristic of a profession;
Profession: any vocation or business.
Slavery: the state of a person who is held in forced servitude
Servitude: a right by which something owned by one person is subject to a specified use or enjoyment by another

 

All that, and you still failed to answer the question. I was commenting on your reaction to what another poster said. I'd thought that had been obvious, but evidently one can't make those sorts of assumptions.

By the way, "at no charge to their clients" would just mean that their clients don't foot the bill, not that they don't get paid.

 

My point was, and still is, that to date, the police have not officially confirmed that a crime was committed, nor have they changed the status of the investigation to “criminal,,” which automatically means that Baldwin been named as a “suspect.” That is likely the reason he has nor conducted himself like he is a suspect. Now, if you have info that contradicts this, please present it.

Further, the police may very well suspect or believe a crime did occur, but until they officially confirm that “belief,” by announcing that a criminal probe is now in progress, police informal beliefs are irrelevant, at least from the standpoint of the criminal justice system. . Your last sentence appears to indicate you agree.

All you know, all I know, is that the investigation is ongoing.

Uh, no. That’s not how the system works. It’s the job of the police to determine if a crime has been committed. The juries’ job is to then determine the guilt or innocence of the charged party or parties.

Jurors may acquit based on their belief that no crime was committed , but that would not change the official police finding (jurisdictions may vary).

 

I’m citing to NYS law here, because that’s what I’m familiar with but these are general principles:


Police do not determine if a crime was committed. Rather, they form a basis as to whether, given the facts and circumstances known to them, there is a “reasonable belief” that a crime was committed (see, e.g., People v Stroman, 106 AD3d 1268 [2013]).


Thereafter, the defendant is entitled to make various motions challenging the evidence, including whether there is sufficient evidence or allegations that a crime was even committed (see, e.g., People v Russo, 57 A.D.2d 578 [1977] [holding that acts alleged to have been committed by defendant did not constitute a violation of the statute and indictment must be dismissed before trial]).


Assuming the case proceeds to trial (and putting aside the concept of “jury nullifcation”), the jury must find that all elements of the crime were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, i.e., that a crime occurred, and the defendant’s commission thereof (see, e.g., CPL § 70.20; People v. Roldos, 112 A.D.2d 388 [1985]). This means the jury has to decide (beyond a reasonable doubt) first that a crime was committed (e.g., the elements are there) and THEN that the defendant is the one who did it.


(Note: I acknowledge under the above that a jury could find a defendant not guilty because, even though the jury finds a crime was a committed they do find sufficient evidence that the defendant was the party who committed it. However, the jury still have to find the crime was even committed to get to that point).


Beyond that, as I said before, the evidence gathering phase often begins before the police have established reasonable cause to believe a crime was committed and, depending on the nature of the suspected offense, statements made by persons of interest or suspects are what provides that reasonable cause. With this in mind, even if Baldwin (or anyone else) had a good faith belief that he or she was innocent of any crime, it was highly advisable to have an attorney present.