I Hate Lawyers
Some of them, anyway. Volokh links to this as “Life Imitates The Onion.” I might call it “Life Imitates Toni Morrison” but whatever it is, it’s dumb:
A Portland lawyer says suffering by African Americans at the hands of slave owners is to blame in the death of a 2-year-old Beaverton boy.
Randall Vogt is offering the untested theory, called post traumatic slave syndrome, in his defense of Isaac Cortez Bynum, who is charged with murder by abuse in the June 30 death of his son, Ryshawn Lamar Bynum. Vogt says he will argue — “in a general way” — that masters beat slaves, so Bynum was justified in beating his son.
According to the article, the judge will only accept evidence of such a defense if the “syndrome” can be shown to be “an accepted mental disorder with a valid scientific basis.” Which it isn’t, so there’s no chance of it getting in. Still, that someone even dreamed it up is nauseating. Hilariously nauseating.
fair enough.
No, actually, I don’t. But, as admitted, I don’t know diddly about that particular area of law. I’m just extrapolating from the principles I do know.
Dan: seems reasonable, but do you think another attorney might use how harebrained this scheme is to indicate that the lawyer is clearly a nut and therefore incapable of representing his client well? Admittedly, I’m certainly not a trial lawyer so I’m way out in SpeculationLand here.
Tim: I’m not nearly as certain as you are about that. Admittedly knowing next to nothing about the subject, my gut instinct is that an affirmative attempt to mount a particular defense cannot lead to an appeal on incompetent advocacy. Those normally apply when the lawyer doesn’t try hard enough, not when he tries way too hard. He’s trying this tactic, it will fail, and then he’ll go on to try another tack. That’s zealous advocacy, not incompetence.
Olly: Yes indeed. We were all slaves, once. Let’s go out and kill!
You beat me to that one by twenty minutes. Damn you, Atkinson. My 2 cents: Given the way the history of the world has generally been, the potential for fun with reductio ad absurdum arguments based upon “post-traumatic slave syndrome” should be virtually endless.
Well, we know the guy is going to have grounds for an appeal based on incompetent representation. Goddamn.