God

Of all of the difficulties in doing criminal defense work, I am becoming more and more convinced that God may be one of the more infuriating ones. I don't mean the actual being (whether they are out there or not) but rather the faith most clients place in God sorting out what is actually a horrible situation.

I had a client a few weeks back who was arrested for a string of violent crimes and in addition to being caught with four or five items corroborating his involvement and five civilians (they don't know the defendant) identifying him, he also gave a videotaped statement confessing to the crime. The judge has already said he would at the very least double the clients time if this case went to trial rather than plead guilty, which would definitely mean that after a trial client would be lucky to get out of jail before he was 75 (if he lived that long).

Horrible situation, and while we certainly could have a trial, it wasn't a case where we were likely going to win an acquittal, and gambling thirty years of a clients life on a case like this wasn't something that I would advise.

Client's response, "I am not worried, God will get me out of this . . . ."

Hmm, so God is going to come down and suppress all of the evidence, get the witnesses not to show up and cause the videotaped confession to disappear? God somehow is going to come down and fix the mess that you are in?

Client: "I am just going to trial and put my faith in god, he will vindicate me at trial"

Two weeks later, same response. "God will provide, I just have to put my faith in him."

This is not an uncommon occurrence, where clients, feeling lost and in a horrible situation, step back from trying to figure out how to get through a horrible situation and instead jump into a wonderful world where nothing can be proved or disproved (maybe god will save them, but who knows). I guess this could be seen as an expression of faith and belief in a world and life greater than that of this mortal earth. I guess that having a belief system in times of stress may allow someone to get through a horrible situation with a sense of dignity and belief in something larger than their current predicament.

But maybe, just maybe, turning to God is a way of avoiding having to make a remarkably difficult decision and pawn it off on God.