Pretend you worked very hard through law school, became a lawyer, and you now currently earn a modest living working independently at law.
You are asked by one of your closest friends to defend someone who has been accused of stealing from the PHHS scholarship fund [or another controversial topic]. The people in both communities, Montvale and Woodcliff Lake, believe that this individual committed the crime. The monetary sum of $2,000 was found in the accused individual's bank account the day after the money was discovered to be missing; the accused could not explain why the money appeared in his account.
If you take this case, you will be looked at critically by everyone around you, and you might even lose some of your close friends. People may come to judge you for your choice to defend an individual that looks blatantly guilty.
The accused person is very poor and states that he did not commit the crime. He has no witnesses to support the fact that he is innocent, but he has never been involved in any arrests/suspicious activities before. In fact, his coworkers have only the nicest things to say about him. If you choose not to defend him, no other lawyer will come to his defense.
The question is: Do you take the case? Why/why not? If yes, what would you offer as a defense? If no, what holds you back from this client? This case is very tough and even though the person seems to be guilty it does not mean that he is guilty of the crime. I would take this case because I want to prove the innocent people to be telling the truth and not get into trouble for something he did not do. Just because the person imported money in to his bank account there is no actual evidence to prove that he committed the crime. The person was not guilty until proven to be guilty and then there would be no evidence to support that he did the crime.
*Challenge*: How is this situation similar to what is occurring in To Kill a Mockingbird?
This situation is very similar to To Kill a Mockingbird because the man was to be guilty of a crime but there was no evidence to prove him guilty. He was accused of a crime and because he is black he was "obviously" guilty just because the color of his skin. Atticus took the case for his own reasons and then he was expecting to win it because there was no evidence. This would be a very hard case to take because they were in the south and they did not approve of black people. Atticus will have to try very hard to defeat the other lawyers and then he will be able to win.
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