One question that I have pondered over for a while is how an attorney can live with themselves after defending someone that they know to be guilty. At tonight’s Rose Cafe with the Honorable Scott Miller, I had the opportunity to ask this question.

Judge Miller has served as a state judge in the Ithaca City Court and Tompkins County Court for the past six years, and before that he was a criminal defense attorney. In this role, he defended criminals who had overwhelming evidence against them or who had confessed to him privately that they had committed the crime. The law states that attorneys are not allowed to reveal any confidential information that the defendant shares with them, so he could not tell the jury that his client was guilty. He has had cases where he was sure that his client would be found guilty but the jury found them not guilty.

He brought up an example of a case where he was the defense attorney, The People vs. Eunice Baker, in which a young woman was found guilty of the murder of a 3 year old child who she was babysitting. Judge Miller knew that the woman was innocent but the jury found her guilty and she was sentenced to a prison term of 15 years to life. She was released after 4 years by The New York State Court of Appeals. He found it much harder to deal with the fact that an innocent client was in jail than to know that a guilty client was on the streets.

Our judicial system is set up to protect the innocent, and in doing so, there will always be guilty people who are set free, since no judicial system can be 100% effective in figuring out who is guilty. If every guilty person was found guilty, there would be many more innocent people serving life imprisonment or ending up on death row. Thanks to Judge Miller’s discussion tonight, I have a much greater appreciation for the attorneys who defend people who have overwhelming evidence against them, because everyone deserves a chance, and every effort possible should be made to ensure that innocent people are not found guilty.