2 teens racing on gessner kill a mother and two children. jail time or probation?

"Fair trial" = institutionalized discrimination. They got a slap on the wrist because the victims were hispanic. If it had been a black *ADULT* killing a white family, he'd have gotten life.

 

It is called ethics. The job of a criminal defense attorney is to be a zealous advocate for your client. The failure here was not the action or inaction of the attorney, it was the jury that sentenced two people that they found guilty to such a light term. I don't know why Texas is having the jury sentence the people anyway. In California, the judge passes the sentence, the jury's only job is to determine the facts of the case (except in death penalty cases). We also have sentences attached to the crimes, so if you are convicted at trial of felony vehicular manslaughter, the sentence would be 2, 3, or 4 years depending on factors in mitigation or aggravation, but most likely 3 years in prison.

While this is mostly right, I don't think it is unconscionable to take the case of a person who you believe or even know is guilty. The Constitution of the United States guarantees every defendant the right to be represented by counsel. Then there is the fact that a good portion of criminal cases are going to be defended by a public defender, so much of the time not taking the case is not going to be an option.

 

No doubt about that, me wonders what percentage of the jury itself were white.

There is zero blame to be passed to the defense attorney in this case. If you have to place blame it goes squarely on the DA and jury itself. DA apparently didn't present a case strong enough for the jury to seriously consider hard jail time and it was the jury who came back with this pathetic verdict.

 

The courts interpret how the law should be applied in particular situations. However, the law is universal. So, the courts should decide what how the law should be applied in this particular situation. That's how it is.

 

To be eligible for enlistment, any and all criminal or traffic offenses must be closed out. So if anything is pending and it shows on the public record, we could not work with them. We also do background checks and depending on the severity of the offense, we pull the court documents.

 

The job of a criminal defense attorney is to get the best result they can for their client within the bounds of the law and to force the government to meet their Constitutional burden of proof as to each element of the offense. Without this, we would end up with innocent people going to prison based on sloppy police work and zealous prosecutors.