Winning Can Exact High Price

“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” --Vince Lombardi When I was a kid, I used to perceive a lawyer as a kind of partner in the judicial process, an amicus curiae or friend of the court (although the phrase connotes a somewhat different contribution).

I thought lawyers for the defense were to assist in finding truth. I remember movies where the lawyer-protagonist (usually Warren William) would come up to his client and say “Now, if you’re guilty, don’t tell me! I don’t want to know about it!”

I knew even then that Hollywood was a distorter of reality, but I was confident it was on the right track: no lawyer could, in good conscience, defend a scoundrel he knew was guilty.

I was wrong. Many years later, when the world had changed, a lawyer friend of mine said: “Oh, no. Everyone is entitled to a defense. It’s up to you to provide it.”

“Even if the guy is a monster?” I asked.

“Even if the guy is a monster,” he agreed.

“But, what if you turn this monster back on the streets?” I wanted to know.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s up to the state to prove its case. You make them prove it.”

“By throwing every piece of sand in the way of the prosecution?”

He nodded. “That’s the way the system works. The state has to prove its case.”

“What if you’re just cleverer than they are? What if you’re able to release a dangerous criminal back into society just because you know more tricks?”

“That’s not your responsibility. That’s their fault.”

I saw this philosophy work many years ago in a case involving the murder of a couple by their daughter and her boyfriend. The first thing the defense attorney did was hire, as his associate, the brother of the county’s most effective and capable judge.

He knew that, by so doing, he could get that judge disqualified from the case and replaced by friend of his, a Boy Scout leader-type who would, and did, let the defense get away with murder, so to speak.

In the trial that followed, letters exchanged between the defendants were introduced in evidence. But only after telltale paragraphs had been excised, in which one or both of the defendants wrote ominously: “So-and-so (first name of the attorney) wants us to say we were in Pomona that night, but we both know where we were (buying the murder weapon).”

The judge ruled out those key portions despite their implied admissions of guilt because entry into the record could have resulted in his lawyer friend facing disbarment proceedings.

The defendants, needless to say, were acquitted. That was my first acquaintance with the fact that, to his attorney, the guilt or innocence of his client is irrelevant.

Little by little, another element crept into the fabric of our society, and it was manifested first and foremost in the sports community. This was the win-at-all-costs mentality.

Losing became the ultimate disgrace.

‘ ‘Show me a good loser--and I’ll show you a loser,” became words to live by.

“Nice guys finish last,” Leo Durocher said, and a whole nation slapped its thigh and laughed.

To lose was to be mocked. Football coaches cheated, on the field and off, to win. Baseball players corked bats, Vaselined baseballs.

“Just win, baby!” became the motto of a whole generation.

Scorn and abuse were heaped on losers.

Baron de Coubertin had said: “The glory of the Olympic Games is not in the winning but in the taking part.”

But nobody in America was listening to that anymore.

The greatest glory was to proclaim yourself “a competitor.” English translation: I’ll do anything to win. You had to win. Second place was nowhere. Scratch, fight, confuse, chisel, con. Be a competitor. Win.

It was inevitable that this credo would slip over into the legal profession. As well as many others. Reputations depended upon winning. You won any way you could. Probed the weak points of the jury. Impaneled one that had plenty of them. Manipulated it like Joe Montana confusing a zone.

A trial became a Rose Bowl game, replete with abstruse rules, offsides, prosecution in motion, holding by the prosecution. Shibboleths took over the profession. “Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.” Oh? Why not? Afraid of the truth?

Get your client off. Never mind the consequences. Society is on its own.

A day of reckoning had to come. It came last Wednesday in Simi Valley. The defense “won” a great “victory.”

Didn’t it?

* MIKE DOWNEY

Hall of Famer Jim Brown is providing leadership in the black community with an organization that emphasizes economic development. C3