The Responsibility Project

1. No Brainer

   This is a no-brainer. Someone is sitting in prison sentenced to life for crimes he did not commit. But the lawyer whose client admits to the crimes decides he cannot present the truth to the prosecutor, because that would violate lawyer/client confidentiality. SO WHAT??? On the face of it and going on the story as presented, at worst, Lawyer Hughes would have been reprimanded by the bar, maybe even had his license suspended temporarily, but had anything worse happened, such as disbarment, the bar would have been embarrassed by a whole LOT of media attention into restoring Lawyer Hughes' bar card. There is no indication that Lawyer Hughes was intimidated by his client into keeping his counsel until the client died, which would have been the one possible justification for not passing on the information that would have released the wrongly convicted man. There is also no indication that he tried to persuade his client to confess or to let him (Hughes) off the hook with respect to lawyer/client confidentiality, but those would have been possible alternatives to doing nothing. This is reminiscent of Mr. Bumble in "Oliver Twist" who famously said, "The law is a ###." That wrongly convicted man's life is ruined. If he had been severely physically injured, all measures would have been taken to save his life, even if the injury was his fault, such as driving badly or standing on a rickety ladder. But no one wants to save his mental life ruined by incarceration. Even when Lawyer Hughes has wasted 22 years of this man's life, the court and the state bar association still didn't get it. Lawyer Hughes was finally forgiven for breaking lawyer/client confidentiality after the client died, but the wrongly convicted man still is incarcerated. In other words, a moral and ethical cluster mess-up.

   • Roberta Pliner
   • 5 months, 3 weeks ago

Share Your Story

Do you have your own story about responsibility? Share it with us and you might see it on this site!