How does attorney-client privilege work? And how is it not perjury to defend the innocence of someone who admitted their guilt to you?
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Anything said between a client and attorney is confidential with very few exceptions. In the American system, you’re innocent until proven guilty. Burden of proof is on the prosecution. Attorneys are not sworn in so it’s impossible to commit perjury.
Clients are encouraged to fully disclose everything to their attorney’s so the attorney can give them the best possible legal advice for their situation. It’s more of an ethics thing for an attorney, who has a duty to do their best for their client, then it’s to protect the client.
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For your first question, attorney-client privilege means that with *very* few exceptions, not only do you not have to divulge conversations between client and lawyer, you’re actually forbidden from doing so.
As for the second question, you’re absolutely right that it *is* perjury to defend the innocence of someone who admitted their guilt to you. Attorney-client privilege does not allow you to lie. But there are other ways to defend your client. You could claim that what your client did was not a crime: the classic example of this is self-defense. You could say that the prosecution can’t actually prove your client did it: remember, they have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or they can’t convict. You could try to argue that the law your client broke is *itself* invalid: this doesn’t work all that often, but it does happen sometimes. You could demonstrate that your client was insane at the time, and therefore can’t be held liable.
There are also rules of evidence to consider. Whenever a trial happens, the prosecution and investigators are also on a kind of trial. They have to prove that everything they did was legal and by the book, and if they can’t, they’re punished by the defendant going free. Defense attorneys play an important role in this process.
First, the attorney themselves is not testifying, so they aren’t committing perjury. There’s another offense though, suborning perjury. A defense lawyer actually has to be careful there.
If his client insists on taking the stand, the lawyer cannot knowingly elicit false statements. There are various ways that lawyers handle that, but mostly they pray their client isn’t that much of an idiot.
Outside of that, a legal defense is not actually an assertion of innocence. There are various actual defenses (like a claim of self defense) but a basic not guilty plea and defense presentation is an assertion that the State cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt and within the law, that the offense was committed.
IOW, the defense doesn’t have to assert innocence, it’s presumed, so there is no actual false assertion necessary in defending a client.
Attorneys can’t disclose what you have told them. Ever.
(So please, people, tell your lawyers the truth. We are literally legally bound to keep secrets.)
If someone tells you they killed someone, but it was in self-defense, you plead not guilty at the beginning because you have a defense. It doesn’t mean the plea can’t change.
Perjury only applies to witnesses in court, who are under oath to tell the truth in the matter.
The attorney is merely an advocate for one side, not a witness.
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but yeah, personally, I can’t and I won’t represent assholes. And if I know or even suspect they’re guilty or sociopaths, I’ll send them to an attorneys’ office I hate most and tell them, “They really admire persistence. Make sure you refuse to leave until the attorney sees you in person.”
Attorney client privilege means that confidential communications between an attorney and a client for the purposes of obtaining legal advice are protected and neither party can be compelled to testify about the communications unless the client waives the privilege. This privilege is pretty ironclad and can only be broken in very specific circumstances such as if the client speaks to their attorney for the purposes of obtaining advice on how to commit or conceal a crime.
It’s not perjury simply to defend a guilty client. Defending a guilty client is more than just trying to convince a jury that they are innocent, a defense attorney’s job is to make the prosecution prove the guilt, not to prove their client’s innocence. If your client tells you they are guilty, you can’t then put them on the stand and have them make false statements, but there’s much more to a defense than that.
Why would the defense attorney ever give testimony? The client has 5th amendment right to not incriminate themselves, and the lawyer can’t be obligated to testify because of the attorney-client confidentiality . Who in any scenario has to perjury themselves to avoid confessing under oath? If there’s no evidence to criminal culpability there would never even be a trial.
Defense attorneys don’t have to claim or prove innocence. The client is already presumed innocent until the prosecutor proves their guilt beyond all reasonable doubt. All the defense attorney does is try to keep the prosecution from doing so.
The defense attorney *also* makes sure their client is tried in accordance with the law, that they are treated within accordance with the law, and that all evidence is handled within accordance with the law. *That’s* their primary purpose.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys have very different functions in our system of justice. It’s not just each side trying to prove their case.
Our system of justice is set up to only punish people for crimes if their crime can be proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. In this system, the defense attorney isn’t there to prove their client innocent. They’re there to ensure that if doubt exists about the prosecutor’s case, the jury hears it. This (in theory) ensures the same bar is met for every person accused of a crime. It also means that defense attorneys don’t have to make claims (lie) about their client’s innocence in the first place.
Yes, this means that some people who committed a crime don’t get punished for it, but it also means that we don’t have “short cuts” to convict people of crimes even if the prosecutor’s case is weak, because that’s how you end up with innocent people in jail in the best case, and a whole mess of politically-motivated convictions in the worst case.
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