# Presentation: 017594

## ETHICS

**BY:  Gordon Zubrod, AUSA**
**         ****Middle District of Pennsylvania**

## There is a deeply-rooted belief that justice takes place in the courtroom.

**There is a much more ambivalent attitude toward those in the courtroom supposedly administering justice.**

**Judges and defense lawyers get a decidedly mixed but generally favorable treatment in the movies.**

**Prosecutors, with few exceptions, are contemptible figures.**

## PRINCIPLE #1

**Procedural rules get in the way of justice**

## PRINCIPLE #2

**It doesn't take a legal expert to see that justice is done.  It simply takes someone who is a decent human being.  The lawyer need not be competent.  He/she need not even be a lawyer.**

## PRINCIPLE #3

**The criminal justice system and the civil litigation system are deeply flawed.  The reason?  Lawyers!**

## The greatest contempt in courtroom films is generally reserved for the prosecutors ----even when they are the good guys and the defendant is guilty.

## "Tommy's particular mix of pride and passion has been nurtured too long in the homicide courtrooms and branch courts.  Those are places where no holds are barred, where defense lawyers use every cheap strategy and device, and prosecutors learn to imitate them.  Tommy has become the kind of prosecutor that the [District Attorney's] office too often breeds: 

**A lawyer who can no longer make out the boundaries between persuasion and deception, who regards the trial of a lawsuit as a series of gimmicks and tricks.**

##     I thought at the start that it would be his molten- hot personality that would be a detraction for the [prosecution].  Instead, the burden he attaches to the prosecution is his inability to escape from his experience.  He is brighter [than others], with a gimlet-eyed cleverness, and he is always prepared, but by now every person in the courtroom suspects that his zeal has no limit.  He will do anything to win....I take it that this trait...must be a...source of the antipathy between the judge and him."

- 								Presumed Innocent
- 								Scott Turow

## Slide 9

## Observation #1:

**Good defense lawyers are very much aware of this public perception and they play to it before juries to gain a tactical advantage.**

## Observation #2:

**When a federal prosecutor steps before a jury, you've got some ground to make up, perceptions to overcome.  There is a distrust factor.**

## Observation #3:

**Juries want to know who you are and whether you care about seeing that justice is done.**

## Don't be cute; don't get into one-upsmanship with opposing counsel.

## Give your case a human face.

## Irving Younger:    There is a perceived distinction between the terms "attorney" and "lawyer".  Always refer to yourself as the "attorney for the United States" and to your opponent "the lawyer for the defendant".

## "The title C barrister C is still held in awe.  Why?  Because none doubts the standards of such professionals.  None even contemplates a possible compromise of values.  Their loyalty to the court is like a flag flown high."

**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****Judge Peter T. Fay**
**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****U.S. Court of Appeals**
**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****For the Eleventh Circuit**

## "Let [the attorney] begin by swerving from the truth and fairness, in small particulars, [and] he will find his character gone C whispered away before he knows it."

**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****G. Sharswood, 1876**

## "I think the lawyer who can give the soundest advice is the one who is able and ready to add a voice of conscience, thus acting as the chancellor did to the king."

**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****Judge Harold Leventhal**
**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****U.S. Court of Appeals**
**	****	****	****	****	****	****	****For the D.C. Circuit**

## Slide 19