To the surprise of no one, the RNC has been running negative ads about Tim Kaine. In the one released before the VP debate on Oct. 4, the narrator says: “He has a passion for defending the wrong people. America deserves better.”
In part, the ad is attacking his anti-death-penalty stance, which is an issue we could argue all day and come to no clear conclusion. But the other part of the ad attacked his work as a defense attorney. “Remember,” the RNC said once more before the debate, that Tim Kaine “defends the wrong people.”
Apparently, Tim Kaine is a bad person for defending murderers. And this isn’t new for the Republican party. It’s happened right here in South Carolina, when Nikki Haley unleashed attack ads on Democratic challenger Vincent Sheheen, accusing him of helping criminals escape jail time and being a champion of domestic abusers. It’s happened earlier in this election as well. Hillary Clinton, who was also a defense lawyer, was featured in an ad in which she was attacked for defending a child rapist — then Donald Trump brought a woman whose rapist Clinton defended to the Oct. 9 debate to scare her.
This shouldn’t be something I have to say, but defense lawyers are a crucial part of the legal system, and raking them over the coals for doing their job is not only ridiculous, but also a gross misunderstanding of how criminal justice is supposed to function in a democratic society.
It doesn’t matter how horrific the crime you have committed is, you have a right to an attorney. It doesn’t matter if you are accused of child rape, serial murder, human trafficking or running a drug empire. Because we are a society that operates under laws that are designed to make our legal system fair and help us find the truth about crimes rather than convict at any cost, criminals have rights, and not liking them or the things they have done does not make them any less deserving of a lawyer to argue their case.
And that is where defense lawyers come in. It is the express purpose of a defense lawyer to protect the rights of criminals. Were they forced to give a confession? Can we truly hold this person liable for their actions? Is the evidence against them really strong enough to convict, or is the case against them built on guesswork and suspicion? These are questions we need to ask before we start locking people in jail and throwing away the key, and defense lawyers are there to make sure that they are answered.
Imagine a world where the police can barge into your house without any reason and without your consent and start rifling through your things. Or a world where you can be beaten until you admit you committed a crime, whether or not you actually did commit it. Imagine you’re completely innocent of a crime, but you spend years locked up in jail for it because the evidence against you was fabricated, not processed or handled correctly, or analyzed poorly, and you didn’t know how to object to the case against you. This is the world defense lawyers stand in the way of by doing their jobs.
Doing their jobs does not make them bad people. They may defend bad people, and they may sometimes get guilty people acquitted without any punishment, or convicted with a lighter punishment than we feel they deserve. They may even know their clients are guilty, but they are still there to assure a fair trial and ask for a fair sentence, or help bargain with the prosecution for a plea deal.
If a defense lawyer is a bad person, it’s not because of their job. It's understandable to find their job distasteful, but just like prosecutors, they serve a vital role in our court system, and we would not like the world we would live in if they didn’t.
Funnily enough, it’s almost always the Republican Party that doesn’t seem to understand that — and it’s not just Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton and Vincent Sheheen who are hurt by the casual assumption that no good and decent human being should defend criminals. It also hurts anyone who has to hope and pray that they will be given a fair shake during their arrest, trial and sentencing. The implication of “America deserves better” is obvious — the criminals named in the ad did not deserve the defense they got.
At this point, let’s stop pretending that the GOP is the “party of the Constitution,” as they claim in their platform. The GOP is the party of the Constitution if and when it’s convenient to them. The GOP is the party of the Constitution when someone suggests gun control or when someone objects to open bigotry. The rest of the time, they could care less about your rights. If it’s not the Second or part of the First, let’s just waive it at will.
According to Donald Trump, we should bring back stop-and-frisk and criminals shouldn’t be given medical treatment. According to Lindsey Graham, they shouldn’t be allowed due process. And according to the RNC, they are too horrible to deserve their right to an attorney.
That’s the Fourth, the Eighth, the Fifth and the Sixth, in case anyone is keeping track. That’s four out of the five amendments that have a major impact on the criminal justice system — and in the case of Lindsey Graham, you could make a half-decent argument for the Fourteenth and round up all five.
That isn’t to say that the establishment Democrats are perfect on these issues. They aren’t. But then again, they’re not the ones claiming to be the defenders of the Constitution. To the RNC — keep that document out of your platform until you can bring yourselves to practice what you’re preaching and defend all of the rights that the law gives us, not just the ones that apply to the people you like.
And keep your paper-thin character attacks and willful misunderstandings of the criminal justice system off the airwaves, while you’re at it.