Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2003 The Difference in Criminal Defense and the Difference It Makes Abbe Smith Georgetown University Law Center,
[email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/215 11 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 83-140 (2003) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Criminal Law Commons GEORGETOWN LAW Faculty Publications February 2010 The Difference in Criminal Defense and the Difference It Makes 11 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol’y 83-140 (2003) Abbe Smith Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center
[email protected] This paper can be downloaded without charge from: Scholarly Commons: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/215/ Posted with permission of the author The Difference in Criminal Defense and the Difference It Makes Abbe Smith* In 1894 I opened an office and went into private practice .... When I began, it was with the intention of trying only civil cases .... I had never had anything to do with criminal cases, and, like most other lawyers, did not want to take them .... -Clarence Darrowl Strange as it may seem I grew to like to defend men and women charged with crime. It soon came to be something more than winning or losing a case. [It] meant more than the quibbling with lawyers and juries, to get or keep money for a client so that I could take part of what I won or saved for him: I was dealing with life, with its hopes and fears, its aspirations and despairs.