There are some weeks when being a criminal defense lawyer feels straightforward.
This is not one of them.
I’m preparing for a trial that I wish wasn’t happening—not because I don’t believe in trying cases, but because this one sits in the uncomfortable space where multiple truths exist at the same time.
My client made decisions I wish she hadn’t made.
The government made decisions I wish it hadn’t made.
Neither reality cancels out the other.
That is the tension of this work.
People often imagine criminal defense as choosing sides. Either the client is right or the government is wrong. Either the system failed or the defendant did.
Most of the time, real life refuses to fit into those categories.
Sometimes a client misses an opportunity they should have taken.
Sometimes the government lets a case drift when it should have acted.
Sometimes administrative failures become real human consequences.
And sometimes everyone arrives at the courtroom carrying decisions they wish could be undone.
This is the part of criminal defense that people rarely see.
Advocating for a client does not require me to believe every decision they made was wise.
It requires me to believe they are still entitled to due process, competent representation, and the full protection of the Constitution.
Those are two different things.
Holding people accountable and insisting that government fulfill its own obligations are not competing values. They are both necessary for justice to exist.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how often we confuse advocacy with agreement.
I can acknowledge that my client bears responsibility for some of the circumstances that brought us here.
I can also acknowledge that the system bears responsibility for decisions that made an already difficult situation more difficult.
Both can be true.
And perhaps that is one of the hardest lessons this profession keeps teaching me.
Justice is rarely found in pretending only one side made mistakes.
It is found in refusing to let anyone’s mistakes erase another person’s rights.
That may be the hardest tension of all.
As a person of faith, I find myself returning to the same conviction over and over again.
Grace has never required pretending harm didn’t happen.
Neither has justice.
Both require us to tell the truth.
The whole truth.
The truth about individual choices.
The truth about institutional responsibility.
The truth that every person who walks into a courtroom is more complicated than the file in front of us.
Tomorrow I’ll continue preparing for trial.
I’ll challenge the evidence where it should be challenged.
I’ll protect my client’s rights.
I’ll do the work I’ve been called to do.
Not because this case is simple.
But because justice is most needed precisely when it isn’t.
On (In)justice 