I had never thought about how conflicting it would be to be a defense attorney until Judge Miller talked about being a defense attorney at the Rose Cafe. You have to believe what your client tells you and you have to defend them even when you know they are guilty. Is it wrong to defend someone who is guilty? If it is your job then you really don’t have a choice. Someone has to defend them. One of the things that struck me the most is that when I was asking Judge Miller questions after the Cafe he said it was worse to be defending someone who is innocent especially when there is an abundance of evidence against them. Is it worse to have an innocent person put in jail or to have a guilty person go free? In my opinion, defending someone who is innocent would be much more stressful because if the defense attorney fails then the innocent person could be blamed for committing a crime that they did not actually commit. An innocent person would be sent to jail. It would be hard to sleep at night knowing that you were not able to prevent an innocent person from going to jail. The job of being a defense attorney is much more complex than just ‘defending the bad guys’ and listening to Judge Miller’s stories reminded me of that.