38 Defense Lawyers Share The Exact Moments They Realized Something Felt Very Wrong

Client was a nurse who had administered a fatal injection. K****d a baby. It was a long story.

TLDR, I got her off any charges of negligence.

Many years ago but this case will stay with me forever.

After hours, small rural hospital, understaffed and under equipped. Paediatric ward, baby very ill with gastro enteritis and hadn't responded to weeks of treatment, was losing weight despite everything.

There was no doctor on the paediatric ward that night (or, in fact, in the entire hospital), when the lab phoned the baby's bloodwork results in to the nurse on duty and said the baby was going to d*e soon if he didn't receive urgent treatment.

Nurse phoned the doctor on telephonic call (who wasn't supposed to go in, having already worked long hours that day, just be available for phone calls) and the doc gave instructions for a sister to give an ampoule of potassium chloride. She wrote down the instruction. The doc didn't specify that it be given orally. Which was what was meant. But because the doc specified that a sister must give it, she assumed it should be an injection as she herself wasn't qualified to give injections (but a nursing sister is).

The nurse called the sister from the maternity ward to carry out the instruction, explained the urgency. The sister was very busy in the maternity ward but came to the paediatric ward and gave the injection. Baby passed away from immediate cardiac arrest.

The partners in the firm didn't want to touch the case as they thought it was impossible.

But in our law, negligence has a specific definition. I won the case for the nursing sister by arguing that my client was trying her best, with only the instructions and resources at hand, under circumstances where she had been told the patient would d*e very soon if the treatment wasn't given.

She was an amazingly dedicated person and what happened had completely devastated her, she wanted to quit nursing. I hope she changed her mind after that.

Afterword:
The one good thing that came out of this tragic event was that I mentioned to a local Rotary Club member that the hospital in question desperately needed some telemedicine equipment (knowing that the club had such a project) and shortly after that they were able to make a donation of equipment to the hospital. (I even coincidentally saw that doctor in passing years afterwards and the doctor was so grateful for that equipment.)

A client once told me all about his big fall in a supermarket. Did all I could to make clear that the client was traumatized because the supermarket didn't clean the d**n floor. Low and behold the supermarket showed a recording of the client setting up his fall by opening a bottle himself and pouring all around the corridor. I just dropped the case right there and let him to figure out how to pay for the legal expenses. So, there it goes, my most impossible to defend client, as, of course, I didn't even try after that point.

My court career was very short (I really didn't enjoy doing it), but I had one client who refused to listen to me, give me instructions or respond to my calls. I can't even remember why he was in court in the first place: maybe we were trying to defend a claim of shoddy workmanship he'd done or something. Anyway, the situation became untenable, and, in England, if you are the lawyer acting in a litigation case (called "on the record") it's actually really difficult to stop acting for the client, unless they agree. You have to go to court and get a court order.



English lawyers who trained in London will be familiar with the bear garden: it's a place in the Royal Courts of Justice where a scary guy called a Master handles a long line of low level procedural issues (can we have another 5 days to file a defence? can we postpone the trial for two weeks because a key witness is in hospital - that sort of thing). He also handles applications to come off the record. Now, I wasn't expecting my client to turn up, but I spotted him lurking at the back of the room.


So, finally, the Master calls me and asks me about the application and why I wanted to come off the record.

"We are not able to get instructions from the client," said I.

"Well, that's fairly unusual. I don't like granting orders on that basis. Have you tried calling him, going to his place of work, that sort of thing?"

At this point I turned to the client who was at the back of the room smirking.

"Excuse me, Master, I need to take instructions from my client."

The Master raises his eyebrow.

I turn to the client and say "So what do you want me to do now?"

"F**k off" he says.

"Application granted" says the Master.

tl;dr Client told me to f**k off in court. The judge gave me the order I wanted.

Maybe a weird answer, but: the ones who I think are innocent. It really means their life and their future is depending on you. If the client really did the crime, it’s... lower stakes, I guess. You can spool up fancy tricks and wait for prosecutors to make a mistake, and the feeling of losing isn’t nearly as devastating. It’s just me and my philosophical opposition to the prison complex, out there takin swings at the government.

My personal hardest was a person who had lived a life of hardship and a***e, who was mentally r******d, and charged with years of “welfare fraud”... by which I mean they filled out the paperwork wrong in many ways but one or two of those ways caused overpayment of about $1,000 per year in food stamps. Completely spent on food, not traded or anything. The overpayment only existed for three out of the six previous years. They got convicted on zero evidence of any intent to lie to the state.

$3k over six years... all spent on food... I still don’t understand why the state wanted to make them a felon based on those facts.

Still hurts to think that I lost that case. I’ll d*e mad about it.

Had a woman charged with violating a no contact order. The order said that she wasn't to come within 100 yards of her ex's house. Cops pull up to ex's house and she's standing in the front yard, waving her arms and screaming.

I was wracking my brain for something to argue to the jury as a reason to find her not guilty. Didn't really come up with much.

I was defending in a DUI case where the guy argued that the reason there was alcohol in his blood is because the cops used alcoholic hand sanitizers when arresting him and the alcohol was on his skin where the needle went... due to the ethical code of the bar association, I had to ask several questions about this from an expert witness who had 20 yrs of medical experience, the witness kind of understood why I had to ask these insane questions nontheless I felt like a moron.

In the end I could still get a better sentence than his plea deal.

My story doesn't involve s*x, d***s or fights, sorry.

I've been a lawyer for almost a year now, so this was one of my first cases.

My father in law asked me to help a friend of his who was having trouble with his driver license. Turns out he had the license revoked because he passed a red light.

Went to talk with the guy, he told me that wasn't him using the vehicle and that didn't received any notifications.

I went to the transit department to get the files of the ticket and man.... It was clear as day that was him in the vehicle. I mean, *he was in fact wearing the same shirt of his driver license picture*, lol

I was almost giving up, told him he could apply for a new driver license and wasn't a big deal, but he confessed to me that he actually had bought that license, paid lots of money and couldn't afford a new one (he is a good driver, but he almost can't read, so he couldn't pass the writing test).

As you may know I had a legal obligation of keep his secret.

Anyway, here in my country, in order to respect the due process of law, transit department needs to send two notifications to a person: one about the ticket and other about the punishment.

We managed to prove that they didn't send the notifications. So he couldn't defend himself, therefore, the process is invalid.

I didn't get into the subject of whether or not he was driving though.

Now he is happily driving and my father in law is proud of me.

Got a DUI client who had kicked his trial date down by almost two years. Had a history of DUI but had cleaned up his act until this one.

His story: he was sitting in his car waiting for a ride when he got picked up, no keys in the ignition, talked to the cops by opening the door, no way he could have hoped to drive the thing.

Cops’ story: keys were in the ignition and window was down. No one disputing that he was s**t-faced.

His case was winnable but for one thing - he couldn’t Lee his d**n trap shut on the stand. If I asked him the time, he told me where his watch was made and what the name of the clerk was who sold it to him. Classic mouth-diarrhea sufferer.

His friends were his other witnesses, and I couldn’t have asked for better ones. The police were the prosecutor’s witnesses, and I poked holes in their testimony left and right. The case was far from an airtight acquittal, but I had more than enough reasonable doubt to win...

...except for my client. Who revealed on the stand that it was his fourth DUI - when, as far as anyone on the jury was concerned, it was his first. Then he couldn’t keep his story straight on how he talked to the cop - opening the window vs cracking the door (makes a difference because the key would have had to be in the ignition for the windows to roll down.) And if I tried to rein him in, he went off on another tangent.

And this was all after refusing to plead to a stipulated first offense, which would have been fines and traffic school - instead, he torpedoed his own case, got convicted, got something like 60 days in jail and a s**t-ton of costs, and I got frustratingly close to a win.

Not a lawyer here, but my dad was, one of his hardest cases was a day I had to go to work with him. The judge was very understanding. He gave me a legal pad to "take notes" I was maybe 3 and couldn't read or write but I took the pad and pen he gave me. And I copied what everyone else was doing. All it was was squiggles and dots. But hey I took notes.

After he heard the argument the judge took my note pad back and checked my notes. He played along. Told me they were excellent notes. He then told me that I did good. And asked me if I thought my dad had the better argument. I said yes because he's my dad. My dad lost the case because the answer was blatant. But still best memory ever.

Side note. He was an environmental lawyer, the case was about a house being built near a wetland and the distance of it and the power used. He lost but hey it worked.

Defense attorney here and honestly sometimes the hardest clients to defend aren’t the guiltiest but the ones who are just a******s.

I’ve had some really sweet, nice clients who are guilty as sin and my goal is to get them the best outcome, make sure their constitutional rights are protected - easy. But the clients who lie to me because they think it’ll make me work harder if I think they’re innocent, the clients who call me a public pretender, the clients who call me nothing more than a mouthpiece for the da - those are the hardest for me to defend.

But don’t get me wrong, I’ll still fight hard as h**l for all my clients.

These three numbskulls broke into a mortuary (well, it was unlocked but still unlawful entry), cut off the head of a corpse, and violated the trachea. I did my best to make a decent closing argument but all the prosecutor did for their closing statement was play the videotape of the incident. Seriously, what kind of a moron videotapes themselves doing this kind of stuff anyway?

Of course all three got convicted.

A 16 year old kid who committed robbery and s****l a***e. He had zero remorse.

I do family law. My hardest clients are the ones that low key alienate their children from an ex over personal feelings. They don’t see it or why the behavior is a problem and they are usually very unlikeable people. Don’t get me wrong, I have repped bad people who still manage to be likeable, but not these walnuts.

My friend always has to defend people that shoplift at Wal-Mart. For some reason they think they can get out of it even though there is clear video showing them stealing and getting apprehended with the stolen merchandise.

This will get buried but here goes.

I externed at the public defender’s office during law school to gain some easy practical credits. On my second day, I was informed that I would be primarily working on a case involving a local hero who had been charged with possession, production, and distribution of p****graphy involving a minor, witness tampering, and a*****t (non-s****l). Already not a case I particularly wanted to work on, but it got worse when I learned that this defendant had made something like 2,000 calls to just about everyone whose number he’d ever memorized since being arrested.

If you didn’t already know, the phones in jails/prisons record your conversations. I spent half a year listening to, in my opinion, an obvious pedophile make enough near-admissions and clear references to the victims that the PD ended up telling the guy to plead guilty to the lesser charges so he could avoid dying in prison.

I graduated and went on to become a corporate lawyer but always tell people now that if they’re ever arrested, for the love of God and the sake of your attorney’s interns, keep your mouth shut and stay away from the jailhouse phone.

There are two.

The first was a guy who was convicted for s*x with a minor. He met this girl online, courted her, then drove a significant distance to meet her, take her from her parents house to a motel, and do their thing. It was straight out of To Catch A Predator except everything was real and Chris Hansen wasn’t hiding around the corner.

The girl was unmistakably under 18. His defense at trial was that she told him she was over 18. She denied that and their chat transcript didn’t show that. He got was convicted and filed a post conviction relief petition arguing is prior lawyer was ineffective and there were errors in his trial. I was appointed to represent him in this.

This guy did not get it. He did the thing he was accused of and was convicted of. He kept blaming everyone else for his predicament: the victim, his prior lawyer, the judge, the cop. It was everyone’s fault but his. I told him he had no case but he was convinced his conviction would be overturned. We had our hearing and it was very short. Petition denied.

He contacted me later about filing an appeal and I was able get out of the case by filing paperwork showing that his case was without merit and nothing I could do would help him.

The second one was a career criminal. An undercover detective contacted him about buying d***s. He wasn’t randomly selected, the d**g task force had intel that this guy was selling, plus his prior record was full of d**g convictions.

He was represented at trial by a public defender. The PD suggested that he cooperate with the d**g task force to help to identify other d**g dealers as a way to get a reduced sentence. This d*****s took that to mean the PD’s office was working for the prosecution and was therefore corrupt. He demanded that the court give him another free lawyer. The judge denied his request several times so he demanded that the PD be removed so he could represent himself. The judge ordered that the PD stay on as “stand by” counsel, meaning he would be there as a resource for the defendant but not act as his lawyer.

Around the same time as this defendant got in trouble, one of the detectives on the d**g task force got fired for having s*x with an informant. The detective and informant were not involved in this defendants case. At trial, acting as his own lawyer, defendant tried to argue that the issue with the fired detective had an effect on his case. The judge had ruled pretrial that this was inadmissible because it wasn’t related to his case. He nonetheless tried to argue it anyway and almost caused a mistrial.

While on the witness stand he admitted to conducting a d**g transaction with the undercover detective, basically proving the prosecution’s case. He was found guilty.

I was again appointed in a post conviction petition. Again, everything was everyone else’s fault. He said he should have been able to argue that the d**g task force was corrupt. He argued that his prior lawyer was corrupt because he suggested cooperating with the d**g task force. All sorts of nonsense. The dude admitted at trial that he did it. That hearing was quick too, and he went back to jail.

He then filed a subsequent post conviction petition arguing that I was ineffective but somehow his subsequent lawyer was able to convince him he has no case so they withdrew it.

So I suppose the hardest clients to defend are the ones that blame everyone else for their problems and can’t see that all their problems are their own doing. And those guys always file post conviction petitions because they have nothing to lose. I’ve stopped taking those cases.

So. Many. But he was a man in and out of prison and with clear mental illness and aggression issues. He was very threatening, rude, and psychotic (I can't give details but use your imagination).

Anyway, during his trial, he appeared by telephone (use your imagination why). When the opposing counsel began to give his opening speech, my client began screaming that the lawyer is a liar, liar, total f*****g b******t etc. I'm telling my client to let the attorney finish and we'll have our time later.

The client screams at me that if I can't correct the lies, he'll have to do it himself. I tell him there's a procedure and we can correct any lies when it's our turn. He pipes down. The other lawyer continues. My client is snickering angry remarks under his breath, like "f*****g b******t" etc. He then starts to scream at the other lawyer. The judge quiets him down but now he's yelling at the judge and s**t is getting real. I'm telling my client to listen to the judge and NOT talk over him. Client finally ends his screaming. We barely finish. More snarky interruptions from my client ensue until the judge says that if I cannot control my client (YES LIKE A F*****G TODDLER), that he'd lose the right to talk for the remainder of the trial.

Somehow my client makes it through without screaming, and whenever he is close to yelling, I have to calm him down like "Mr. X, don't worry we'll have our turn." The judge is pissed as f**k because what should've taken an hour took two and a half. Then he says, "any final remarks," and I s**t you not, my client addresses me and is like, "am I allowed to say that if the judge doesn't side with me, I'm going to..." I cut him off immediately, and was like no, unless there was any evidence missing, there's nothing more.

'Til this day I'm not sure what he was going to say but based on a prior conversation where he said he'd "bash someone's head in" if they got in the way of his goals on the streets, I suspect it may have been threatening.

Anyway, we lost the trial. Many weeks later, I heard that people from several rooms away heard my client screaming during his trial.

I was a public defender and had an older white man as a client who beat up a teenager in a drunk driving road rage incident. The kid testified at a preliminary hearing and thanks to some handy work I got all the charges dismissed. The hard part was the kid was 17 and very gay. My client admitted to me and anyone else that would hear it that he was trying to get some Jesus in the kid and “make him right.” I never told my client and it’s not exactly obvious but I am also very very gay. It was a real moral and ethical struggle.

It’s a toss-up between the admitted child r**ist and the mother who lost custody when CPS found out her 6 kids were sleeping in a dank basement and getting m***sted by older cousins, with her knowledge.

Have a neighbor who was part of defense team for a h**h profile case where person was clearly guilty... said at that point, it's just about getting them a fair trial, negotiating conditions of confinement (max/medium/min security), proximity of prison to family, etc.