Word: lawyerly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ethical nightmare dreaded most by criminal-defense attorneys, and it occurs all too often. A client wants to take the stand with a good alibi, but his lawyer strongly suspects the story is a fabrication. Should the attorney look the other way and let the testimony go forward? Miami Lawyer Ellis Rubin answered no, and last week his response landed him in the Dade County jail...
Unpersuaded, Rubin continued to resist defending Sanborn. "To order any attorney to sit and watch with apparent approval while his client commits forbidden acts to a jury does nothing less than order the lawyer to be a knowing instrument of totally unethical and dishonest conduct," he protested. "Silence here is participation; it is cooperation with evil." Judge Shapiro held Rubin in criminal contempt and sentenced him to 30 days. Fully prepared, with underwear and shaving kit stuffed in his briefcase, Rubin last week heard Shapiro pack him off to jail. Undaunted, the lawyer arranged for a habeas corpus petition...
Rubin's dilemma has dogged lawyers and courts since the beginnings of the legal profession. "It is an unchallenged rule of professional ethics that a lawyer may not put on a witness who he knows is going to lie," explains Law Professor Phillip Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley. When the lying witness is the attorney's own client, however, the rule runs smack into another fundamental ethical rule -- a lawyer's obligation to protect the confidentiality of his client's conversations. Legal scholars have tilted back and forth over the issue. The currently prevailing view, endorsed...
Typically, a lawyer will attempt to drop the client, as Rubin did. Sometimes the lawyer may warn the judge outright of the perjury. A third alternative is the one suggested to Rubin by the Florida appeals court: to stand mute while the defendant narrates his story unaided, a solution rejected by the A.B.A. but permitted in some states. For the lawyer who decides to part from a client, says Hofstra Law Professor Monroe Freedman, "the point of no return is when you are so close to trial that the judge is not going to grant a motion to withdraw." That...
...employ at least one live-in maid, and, with monthly wages running around $60, many have a cook or gardener as well. The thought of doing without household help seems to panic the whites almost as much as the slogan "One Man, One Vote." The young wife of a lawyer in Johannesburg, who is also the mother of two small children, was recently discussing possible emigration to the U.S. When told what a maid would cost in Washington or New York, she closed the conversation by saying "Then I guess I can't go. I have two maids here...