Lootman wrote:That's really a moral or emotional decision rather than a legal or logical one. If my lawyer advised me to plead not guilty (as happened) it would never cross my mind to not follow his advice. After all I am paying him to do his job, which is to mitigate the outcome as much as possible.
And whilst I do not consider myself a "serious, professional criminal" in any way, not even in my somewhat misspent youth, I do most certainly want to get away with something if I can.
It's interesting that you appear to have entirely discounted any question of conscience. Your admission that you would, having committed a crime, then wish to get away with it if possible is entirely consistent with the mindset of a professional criminal but is not consistent with the way most `non-professional' criminals react.
Many crimes are committed by ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. For example, a wife who loves her husband may nevertheless be driven by his behaviour to attack and seriously injure or even kill him; an otherwise honest employee in a dire financial position may be tempted to `borrow' from his employer, fully intending to repay it; a man who is basically a decent human being may become a rapist when consensual sex becomes (or is deemed to become) non-consensual.
When such criminals are caught they do not usually view their crime in the dispassionate, logical way that you do. They are usually deeply ashamed of their behaviour and actively want to `own up'. The reason they will often refuse the option of running a `technical' defence is that they want to take their punishment so that they feel they are then entitled to be admitted back into society having performed their penance. We all know the contempt in which criminals are held who escape conviction on a legal technicality, and they don't want to be seen in that light.
In fact the whole thing about feeling guilty is a red herring. People generally feel guilty after they get caught. If they had really felt guilty before getting caught, they'd have given themselves up
That's a very simplistic and somewhat naive view. Many people who have committed a one off crime will feel extremely guilty, but there are many practical considerations that mitigate against handing themselves in. They have to consider the effect of doing so on their family, their job, their financial situation, their standing in the community and so on. Such factors will in most cases outweigh the `urge to purge' their guilt, but it doesn't mean that they don't carry it with them or that it's not a heavy burden.
It may be a cliche, but like most cliches it only exists because it reflects the truth, that someone who is eventually caught for a crime committed some time ago may actually feel relieved that it's out in the open and that they have finally paid their debt.
Of course for a criminal defence lawyer a client with a conscience is just a PITA!
But I wonder whether the very ethical behaviour you usually see with your clients is a function of where and how you practice law. A country solicitor's office in a quiet town is going to encounter a rather different demographic than, say, a solicitor based in the East End of London.
Criminals are the same everywhere. However, although I've not practised criminal law for many years most of the serious criminals I dealt with in my early years were from Liverpool and Manchester, and in a league table of criminality I think bot cities would compete fairly effectively with the East End!