It's not just that my clients lie to me a lot, which will only hurt them --- it's that they're really, really bad at it.
[Originally posted on Singal-Minded]
My job as a public defender puts me in a weird place. I am my clients' zealous advocate, but I'm not their marionette. I don't just roll into court to parrot whatever my clients tell me --- I make sure I'm not re-shoveling bullshit. So for my sake and theirs, I do my homework. I corroborate. I investigate.
A significant portion of my job ironically mirrors that of a police detective. Every case I get requires me to deploy a microscope and retrace the cops' steps to see if they fucked up somehow (spoiler: they haven't). Sometimes I go beyond what the cops did to collect my own evidence and track down my own witnesses.
All this puts some of my clients of the guilty persuasion in a bind. Sure, they don't want me sitting on my ass doing nothing for their case, but they also can't have me snooping around on my own too much. . . because who knows what I might find? So they take steps to surreptitiously install guardrails around my scrutiny, hoping I won't notice.
You might wonder why any chicanery from my clients is warranted. After all, am I not professionally obligated to strictly maintain client confidentiality? It's true, a client can show me where they buried their dozen murder victims and I wouldn't be allowed to tell a soul, even if an innocent person is sitting in prison for their crimes. Part of my clients' clammed-up demeanors rests on a deluded notion that I won't fight as hard for their cases unless I am infatuated by their innocence. Perhaps they don't realize that representing the guilty is the overwhelmingly banal reality of my job.[1] More importantly, it's myopic to forget that judges, prosecutors, and jurors want to see proof, not just emphatic assurances on the matter.
But clients still lie to me --- exclusively to their own detriment.
Marcel was not allowed to possess a firearm. And yet mysteriously, when the police arrested him --- the details are way too complicated to explain, even by my standards --- in his sister's vehicle, they found a pistol under the passenger seat.
"The gun is not mine. I don't even like guns. I'm actually scared of guns." He told me this through the jail plexiglass as I flipped through his remarkable résumé of gun-related crimes. Marcel spent our entire first meeting proselytizing his innocence to me. Over the next half hour he went on a genealogy world tour, swearing up and down on the lives of various immediate and extended members of his family that he never ever ever touched guns.
I was confused why he perseverated so much, but I just nodded along as part of my standard early precarious effort to build rapport with a new (and likely volatile) client. What he was telling me wasn't completely implausible --- sometimes people are indeed caught with contraband that isn't theirs --- but there was nothing I could do with his information at that early stage. Maybe he thought if he could win me over as a convert, I'd then ask for the case to be dismissed on the "he says it's not his" precedent.
Weeks later, I got the first batch of discovery. I perused the photographs that documented the meticulous search of his sister's car. I saw the pistol glistening beneath the camera flash, nestled among some CDs and a layer of Cheetos crumbs. And on the pistol itself, a sight to behold: to this day the clearest, most legible, most unobstructed fingerprints I have ever seen in my legal life. If you looked closely enough, the whorls spelled out his name and Social Security number.
Public defenders are entitled to ask the court for money to pay for private investigators, digital forensic specialists, fingerprint examiners, or whatever else is needed to ensure a defendant in a criminal case is provided with his constitutionally guaranteed legal bulwark. The photographed prints here were so apparent that an examiner could easily rely on the photos alone to make a comparison.
Marcel had earned himself some trolling from me. I went back to see him at the jail, faked as much enthusiasm as I could muster, and declared, "Good news! They found fingerprints on the gun!" He stared at me stunned and confused, so I continued.
"Well, when we first met, you told me that you never touched the gun," I reminded him with an encouraging smile. "Obviously you wouldn't lie to your own lawyer, and so what I can do is get a fingerprint expert to come to the jail, take your prints, then do a comparison on the gun itself. Since you never touched the gun, the prints won't be a match! This whole case will get dismissed, and we can put all this behind you!"[2]
He was still reeling but realized I was waiting for a response. "You. . . don't need to do that," he muttered. I had the confirmation I was looking for, but I pressed him while maintaining the facade of earnest congeniality.
"But why not?" I sang in staccato, smile wide. "You told me. That. You. Never. Touch any guns."
Turned out Marcel might have accidentally touched the gun. So his prints could be on it. I had made my point, so I dropped the act. I explained to Marcel that the only thing lying to me accomplishes is to slow things down and worsen his own prospects --- how could I pursue any potentially helpful leads for his defense when I couldn't be sure I wasn't about to bumble into an incriminating revelation?
Marcel nodded sagely and claimed to understand, but he went on to lie to me many more times over the next two years that I remained his attorney. Marcel has and will spend the majority of his adult life in prison --- not necessarily because he lied to me but that certainly didn't help.
My first meeting with Kyle was useless. He insisted throughout that it wasn't him, that he wasn't even there. Now, personally speaking, if several witnesses claimed to have seen someone who looks like me, in my car, with my girlfriend in the front seat, commit a drive-by shooting in broad daylight, I would summon slightly more curiosity about who this apparent doppelganger might be. But Kyle gave me no leads, pantomiming an internal agony about not wanting to be a snitch, clutching at his stomach as if the mere thought was physically unbearable.
His tune eventually changed. "I need you to tell the prosecutor who was driving my car," he said."His name is Richie Bottoms." If the name hadn't given it away, I already knew where this was going,[3] and I was excited for the coming entertainment. I pretended to be enthused by his revelation, and let Kyle know that I had a "really great" investigator who's phenomenal at tracking "anyone" down --- even the elusive Dick Bottoms.
Based on his reaction, that wasn't the response Kyle expected; another illustration of a myopic theory of mind (not uncommon among the interpersonally inept) incapable of simulating anything but affirmation. He tensed up momentarily, but realized that he'd already committed himself to acting out a demeanor congruent with the "innocent client responds to helpful attorney" fantasy. Yet the only excuse he could muster up in the moment was that Richie wouldn't be found because he fled to Los Angeles.
I maintained what must have been an obnoxious level of optimism, explaining how "perfect" that was because my investigator "knew lots of people" there. My job affords me few if any moments of joy, and so forgive me if I overindulged in Kyle's vexation. I'll spare you a full accounting of the myriad reasons he gave why tracking down Sir Bottoms was a lost cause. Suffice to say that in addition to being out of state, Richie had maybe fled the country; also, Richie happens to look almost identical to Kyle, but also we might not even know his real name since he went by "Arby," and no one had his phone number, et cetera. . .
Even when we moved on to other topics, Kyle couldn't let it go, interrupting whatever we were talking about to repeat warnings about how tracking down Richie was going to be a total waste of time for my investigator and me. He was palpably angry, but had no viable outlet for his frustration, and so he just stewed, stuck with his lie. I kept my poker face. It's a stark contrast to my factually innocent clients, who cannot help but drown me with leads to pursue in the hopes that any are helpful.
The whole thing reminded me of Carl Sagan's parable of the dragon in his garage as a critique of certain unprovable religious beliefs. Can I see the dragon? No, it's invisible. Can I detect its fire's thermal image? No, the fire is heatless. Can I find Dick in Los Angeles? No, because now he fled the country.
There's always some excuse --- there's always some eject button allowing my defendants to evade specific evidence demands. No matter how ridiculous.
It's banal for my clients to deny the accusations, but a special breed takes denial to the next level by waging total jihad against their accusers. It's a sort of a reverse counterpart to the Narcissist's Prayer:
If they claim I was driving during the hit-and-run, they're lying. And if they're liars, then they exaggerated their injuries. And they're exaggerating because they're after an insurance payday. And we know they're after a payday because they sued their dry cleaners in 1993. And they're framing me to get money, which is how we know they're lying.
In these clients' telling, nothing is their fault. The random bystanders who randomly drew the unlucky witness card become a convenient scapegoat. Yet these clients are so myopically overwhelmed by the desire to bounce the rubble on a witness's credibility, they don't notice how implausible their story becomes with each new clause they tape onto their fabulist's scrapbook.[4]
Sometimes clients are self-aware enough to couch their denials in innuendo. Ivan, who was accused of [redacted], was waging the same Total War approach against Cindy, a social worker at the homeless shelter where Ivan regularly stayed. Cindy was a dangerous witness --- an uninvolved, respected professional who severely undercut Ivan's alibi defense about having never left the shelter to go on his [redacted] spree.
In yet another of our jail rendezvous, Ivan expounded at length about how Cindy's testimony was invalid because, as a social worker, she would be violating HIPAA.[5] The glaze over my eyes must have gotten too obvious for me to hide, so he switched tack, shuffled through his jail-sanctioned filing system (read: pile), and slid a flyer across the table about trash cleanup day at the shelter, with a smiling cartoon trash can picking up a baby garbage bag while announcing "Pick up a little trash, talk a little trash." It's cute, but what the fuck was I supposed to be looking at? Ivan stared at me grinning and expectant, but his demeanor quickly turned into disappointment at my ongoing silence. He snatched the flyer out of my hand and jammed his finger at the "talk a little trash" clause. "This!" he shouted, and then just stared at me again. I looked at the words that meant so much to him and nothing to me and just said, "Huh?"
His disappointment transmogrified into astonished anger. "Do I have to fucking spell it out for you?" he screamed. "I thought you were the lawyer here!" We had been ping-ponging across various aspects of his case for the last hour or so and I gave up on any posturing and reiterated my ignorance at the significance of the cartoon flyer. Ivan snapped, "Cindy is encouraging people to trash talk!" For, you see, she wrote the flyer. "I'm trying to show you that she's a fucking punk! And a liar!"
I immediately understood why Ivan was so attached to remaining within the realm of innuendo. Because as soon as he gave his claim some body ("We should infer lack of credibility from individuals when they author flyers that include garbage-related puns"), he knew how much of a dumbass he would sound like out loud.
Ivan moved on from the flyer, and instead asked how to disqualify a witness "for being a liar." I tell him that's not a thing,[6] which sent him into a further rage. "I need you to be on my side here but all I hear from you is 'NO.' Why are you working for the prosecutors?"
The manipulation attempts we just cataloged were comically inept, and fell apart with far less effort than it took to create them. Slightly more polished versions of these charades are regularly deployed within the Discourse™ but they're equally hollow and just as pathetic. So those are some of my clients --- individuals who cannot rise to the level of your average internet troll.
[1] There is a kernel of an exception that is almost not worth mentioning. The Rules of Professional Conduct 3.3 obligates me with the duty of candor. I am not allowed to present evidence that I "know" is false, which encompasses witness testimony. Some jurisdictions make exceptions to this rule for defendants testifying in their criminal trial (correctly, IMO) but not all. So assuming that a client truthfully confesses to me, assuming we go to trial, assuming they decide to testify, and assuming I "know" they're going to lie, then yes, this could indeed spawn a very awkward situation where I'm forced to withdraw in the middle of proceedings.
[2] I'm told I put on a good poker face.
[3] There was no Richie Bottoms.
[4] For example, Kyle asked if it was possible to present self-defense evidence on behalf of "Richie Bottoms," just in case.
[5] Does this sound familiar to anyone?
[6] During the editing process, Jesse was skeptical of this. "Wait," he asked me in a Google Doc comment, "there's NO way for one side to prove to a judge that a witness is so untrustworthy the jurors/judge shouldn't consider their testimony?" Correct. The closest rule is disqualifying a witness as incompetent, either for being too young, severely mentally ill or mentally retarded, or too intoxicated (on the witness stand!). Credibility is up to the judge/jury to decide, and if a witness has a history of lying, then it makes for a very easy credibility impeachment. Theoretically, in extremely rare circumstances, a judge could strike the testimony of a witness or find them in contempt, but they'd have to be seriously flagrant about their lying under oath. I have never heard of this happening.
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Notes -
Help me understand more clearly why this is 'deluded'? it might be wrong but deluded? You talk about your clients' poor theory of mind later, but don't offer any reason why, in their shoes they should know and beleive that you work just as hard for clients you believe are guilty.
I know it is a light hearted article, but the whole spirit of sneering and literal anecdotes of mockery and sarcasm with these people is good evidence that you might treat them psychologically differently. Maybe you really really would never work a little harder, polish a little more, fight a little better for a client you were sympathetic too, but that hardly seems deluded to assume.
When I recieved a serious speeding ticket, which I beleived was somewhat in err, the exact thought was in my mind as I debated how to discuss it with lawyers. Yes, yes, they're all going to fight for me to get out of it, and yes it's routine boring shit. But with even a chance of outcome unpredictability in the air, and knowing that I won't be there when the lawyer negotiates with the DA, is it really, not just incorrect but 'deluded' to wonder whether the lawyer, who's not getting any bonuses for better outcomes here, might advocate a little better for me if he likes me? (also I, a PhD, wasn't 100% confident exactly what the rules were about incriminating yourself to your lawyer. I can only imagine some level of lingering uncertainty with an uneducated criminal, especially if their lawyer talks to them with sarcasm and playful mockery that goes over their head.)
Even if that's not a conscious thought, we all want to ingratiate ourselves to people who hold some sort of power over us. You might see yourself as 'working for' this guy, but every time I interact with a doctor, a mechanic, or much less often a lawyer, I have a strong pang of recognition that my outcomes are somewhat at the mercy of this busy stranger's scruples. I become over eager to prove myself worthy of their esteem and extra consideration. Is it stupid and often counterproductive, sure. But your sneering about it to strangers on the internet only reenforces my perception that professionals are contemptuous of a lot of the pleebs they have to boringly 'serve'.
He's not sneering. People really are this stupid.
Now, if you fudge things a little to put yourself into the best light, okay. That's natural.
If you fucking lie to my face about stupid shit that I know is a lie, and moreover this is a shitty dumb lie that harms your case, then I'm still going to do my job, but by God I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt or try and help you out of the holes you are digging for yourself.
I'm more sympathetic because I've seen people a rung or two above this level (but some fall right down the ladder) and dealt with them in former jobs, and they are not misunderstood little lambs. Some of them are even genuinely evil.
Most, though, are stupid and greedy. They make things worse for themselves by lying, because telling the truth (or as near as they can bring themselves to tell it) will work out better in the long run. Take the example of Marcel: how absolutely stupid would the lawyer have looked in court when he promised the judge up, down and sideways his client never even touched the gun - and now here's his clear prints all over it? Marcel would have done way better for himself with "Okay, man, so I know I'm not supposed to have guns, but this is not my fault, I sorta picked up this gun and then - " even if that was a bullshit story too.
Because the lies are so dumb and so shoddy, they get shown up as lies in no time at all. Like the cases I heard of when working in social housing: one client who swore that she never even had a boyfriend, no way, it was just her and nobody else would be moving in to the house if she got one. Then she goes on Facebook showing off her engagement ring and boasting about the honeymoon they were planning. Yes, turns out housing officials do things like check Facebook for exactly these reasons. Because if two people are going to be living in the house, then there should be two people paying rent, but some people think they can get away with "No, just me" and then move in the boyfriend/girlfriend at no cost afterwards.
Or the client who mysteriously got pregnant by some unknown person. Okay, so she broke up with her ex-boyfriend, then they met up for his birthday, and went drinking, and she went back to his place, and they had sex, but clearly that could not be the reason she was pregnant. No, it was just some mysterious unknown event and we certainly shouldn't be asking if he was going to pay child support. Again, nine out of ten times the guys don't pay maintenance because they claim to have no income (and often really don't have any income), but we're supposed to find out if there are any sources of income by the tenant. Lying about the guy who's your baby daddy so he won't be asked to contribute ten quid a week is a no-brain-involved move.
Dumb, stupid lies by dumb, stupid people. Who get themselves into trouble because they think they're smarter than they are.
EDIT: You talk about "contemptuous of a lot of the pleebs they have to boringly 'serve'" but that's not it. There are a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, are struggling. Maybe they haven't had a good education, or they are not that smart, or they have mental/physical problems, or are the products of broken homes. We do try our best to help those people.
But there are the ones who are liars, grifters, and would slit your throat for a sixpence, and those are the ones who try the dumb, stupid lies and who will exploit everyone around them, including their own kids. I've seen cases of women deliberately hampering their own kids from getting help with learning/psychological disabilities, because as long as Mommy is able to claim that Junior has special needs she can get more resources out of the system. If Junior is improving because they're getting the supports they need, that's Mommy's little gravy train derailed.
You have no fucking idea how horrible some people are. And I'm seeing the ones who aren't at the level of "well here we are in the courthouse again".
Making fun of stupid people for being stupid is sneering.
Well this kind of proves the point that you're going to give a different service based on your perception of the person you're dealing with.
Now of course, lying is a stupid and self fulfilling way for you to lower your esteem and because they're stupid, they're stupid liars. But the premise that OP immediately dismisses as deluded, is proven out here.
My biggest problem here is the claim that it's deluded to suspect one might be treated differently based on perception of sympathy.
I know ymkeshout enough to believe that he wouldn't consciously do that. But have no reason to extend that to any given professional wouldn't. And I don't believe that ymkeshout or anyone doesn't unconsciously. Replication crisis and all that, but the principles of influence and persuasion aren't totally false.
Of course lying to your lawyer is the wrong way to deal with that, but the premise as argued is wrong.
This article is 1 part dismissing as delusional to suspect you might get difference based on perceived sympathy. 1 part the fact that non Lawyers don't know ahead of time what is or isn't a lever in the legal process and 2 parts laughing that stupid people make stupid decisions.
And consider that this whole discussion exists in a world where lying about something as obviously stupid as, your gender can get you put into a better prison. So...
Intelligence is not the only relevant axis here. I represented someone who had an IQ of around 60-80 and he was one of my favorite clients ever. He got dinged on a DUI and was super respectful and always on time to our meetings, and I really felt for him when he expressed fear and earnest confusion about why he was in trouble. He was verifiably the least intelligent client I've ever had, but he never lied to me or the cops ("Yes I was drinking tonight sir, I am so sorry sir, I am so sorry sir.") and except for that one case he just carried on his life working as a nighttime janitor.
The clients I laugh about above also lack intelligence but to a lesser degree that the janitor. What really sets them apart is their dishonesty combined with the baseless confidence that deludes them into thinking they can successfully pull off their cons.
Oh, yeah. Like the clients who show up to appointments about their housing needs baked to the gills, but confident that there is NO WAY you, straight authority figure person in an office, can tell they're stoned off their gourd because hey, they can walk in a straight line. That's funny, and harmless, and doesn't mean we have nothing but sneering contempt for them.
There's people who have literacy problems and other difficulties and do need a lot of time and patience to help them, and again, not evoking sneering contempt.
It's the guy who never showed one scrap of interest in his now nine year old daughter, but wants a two bedroom house as a single man because he's an 'artist' and needs a studio, and gets refused on the regulations that nope, single guy, one bedroom flat or house is all he's entitled to, who then suddenly turns up with "oh I'll be having my daughter to stay, now I need that second bedroom". We all know that kid is never going to stay overnight in his house, and that spare bedroom will become the studio, and if she ever does visit she'll be sleeping on the sofa in the living room. But we're supposed to swallow this obvious fake story and just hand over the goodies, because Mr. Artist asked. That's the guy that I can't find it in my heart to give a scrap of sympathy for his troubles, poor poor man.
What's your job by the way? I've dealt with similar scenarios when I volunteered as a low-income tax preparer. I remember one guy who came in with his sister or whatever and who wanted to claim three kids as dependents even though he earned $500 the whole year. His sister earned way more and could plausibly claim all three kids, and we sort of gently and patiently tried to explain to them that there was no net profit to be gained from spreading the kid deductions/credits around. Of course they didn't believe us and concluded we were a barrier to their scheme and left in a puff.
Last night, I saw some signs that caused me to reflect back on this OP and think about distinctions between making fun of stupid people and trying to think about how to live life and what to expect from society while at least not mentally denying the existence of a wide range of folks. I wasn't sure I'd share it here, but you mentioned low-income tax preparation, so I feel like I must.
The signs were offering tax return services. I think at least one of them mentioned something about an advance being available; that's a service that I understand being available. Might not be the best rates, but offers of short-term credit to low-income folks has been beaten to death as a topic, so I wasn't at all impacted by that. What caught my eye is that these signs just threw out completely random ass numbers. One said something like $4995, which was portrayed as like, "This is how much money we will get you," and then sort of portrayed as the "fine print" being that the number was only good if you had one child. Nearby, there was another sign that just boldly declared a slightly different figure, but this one had it in a series of figures. This much if you have one child, about a grand more if you have two, and about another grand more if you have three. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it wasn't "about a grand more"; they gave specific numbers, as if those were just straightforwardly the number of dollars that you'd receive on your tax return if you were in the appropriate category and used their services. As if you could just find the company that advertised the highest number, and that's how you could get the most dollars.
Maybe I just didn't pay close enough attention to the signs while driving by and they had detailed fine print in little letters, but man, first off, that just sounds like false advertising. Most of all, it struck me just how much of a fundamental misunderstanding of how any of this works1 it would take for this sort of advertising to be effective. But then I feel like, surely, this sort of advertising must have some level of effectiveness within the community in which it is being used, otherwise people likely wouldn't do it, right? Thus, back to reflecting on the need to always remember how wide of a range of people there are in this world.
1 - In fact, I may have some fundamental misunderstandings about how these sorts of advertisements work. If it really was "higher number wins", then you'd think it would get even more obscene. Yet, being completely out of whack too often may just piss customers off and drive them away. Do they just pick some X percentile estimate for likely returns in the local area? ...what friggin' percentile of returns would ~$5k be?! Has EIC gotten that insane, or are there really that many people who randomly ended up with wildly off W9s?
It seems to me any advertised specificity of four digits is a claim of competency and confidence, not a true advertisement of a dollar amount. Put $3695.19 on there, and Normalman will think, “Man, six digits, that guy really knows his shit!”
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