Attorney-client relationship is based upon the attorney’s
ability to keep the client’s affairs confidential, and the attorney actually
has an ethical obligation to do so. At
what point does that ethical obligation of confidentiality become negated by
something that the client does. Client
perjury is a difficult issue when it comes to attorney-client
confidentiality. What does an attorney
do when a criminal client gives a set of facts for the majority of the
representation, and when the client gets on the stand starts to give a complete
different set of facts? The attorney knows
that the client is committing perjury due to other circumstances with the
case. Good question. The attorney could at that point attempt to
remediate by asking the court to allow the attorney to have a minute with the
client. The attorney could also side bar
and explain that he/she needs to withdraw at this time due to a personal
conflict and ask how would the court like to proceed. I believe it is an extremely difficult
situation to be in when a client has decided to commit perjury without fully
realizing the consequences of those actions.
If a client comes to an attorney for help in furtherance of
a criminal act the confidentiality between the attorney and client is
negated. In other words, if a client
comes into an attorney’s office and tells the attorney that she has put poison
in her boyfriend’s dinner and he eats at 6pm.
The time is currently 1pm. The
attorney has a duty to report the information to prevent future harm. However, if the boyfriend had already eaten
the dinner, and became ill. The
girlfriend was then subsequently arrested, and retained an attorney. She then told the attorney that she had put
the poison in his dinner that information would be subject to attorney-client privilege.
Bibliography
Banks, C. (2013). Criminal Justice Ethics (3
ed.). Thousand Oaks, Ca, USA: SAGE Publications.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteI'd say that each attorney has to answer those conflicts individually. To show an example of a very honest public defender, I watched that attorney tell the judge that his client in a DUI crash wanted to make a statement. The trial had just been called and the prosecutor had already been warned that a statement was going to be made. The defendant stated in open court that he gave a false name to police when arrested because he had (in his own words) immigration issues." He then gave the court his proper name. I can safely assume that the attorney warned him that admitting this would lead to additional charges, both felonies (perjury, two forgery of a public record charges, and two uttering of a public document charges) and a misdemeanor. Yet the attorney and defendant felt it was the right thing to do.
James
Christina: You wrote a very good blog on a subject that presents difficulties for defense attorneys. You drew the ethical line well. Professor Taylor
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