https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Zxp_qczoJ5A
Well sometimes people think they’re guilty and they’re not. That’s tricky. You know, I saw that in psychotherapy all the time, is people would convict themselves at a second’s notice and I would look into it and I’d think, actually, you know, this wasn’t nearly as much your fault as your, you know, because you think, well, you should take responsibility for your actions and fair enough, but there are errors in that direction too, is you should take responsibility for your actions, but the presumption of innocence also applies to you even if you are inclined to be guilty and so that principle that you should take on every client as a lawyer, it’s a good principle. It’s a very good principle. You never know what the story is until you get to the bottom of it. I remember early on at one of these dinners that I was compelled to go to, you know, when I started out at Lincoln’s Inn where I’m a member, there’s one of the leading criminal barristers who did all the top murder cases and rape cases and we’re all having dinner with him and one of the students said to him, how do you feel defending someone you know to be guilty or you believe to be guilty? And he said quickly, he’s a brilliant barrister, he’s now dead. He said, I feel relieved. What do you mean? He said, because there’s nothing worse than representing someone you believe to be innocent because you can only screw it up, but if you believe they’re guilty and you still do your best, it’s not so bad if you, you know, if something happens, they go, it’s, if you believe, if you believe they’re innocent and you screw it up, it’s a disaster for you. Whereas you still do your best both ways, but it puts a lot of pressure on you believing somebody is innocent. Yeah, well, there’s an open question too in any complex situation. It’s like, well, guilty of what exactly? Because the devil’s always in the details. It’s a famous ad, if I can interject for a second, which I saw once, I don’t know if it’s famous, but it’s famous in my mind, put it that way. It’s a guy who’s trying to get some clients for defense work and criminal defense work and the ad is it’s a big poster and says, just because you did it doesn’t mean you’re guilty. Bring me. It doesn’t because there’s a lot of things between thinking you’ve done it or even doing it and actually being proved guilty of it. Yeah. The Bible is the root of all wisdom, inspiration and spiritual nourishment. The Hallow app empowers you to explore the Bible’s profound teachings and to effortlessly incorporate them into your daily life. 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Download the app for free at Hallow.com slash Jordan. You can set reminders and track your progress along the way. Enrich your education and nurture your mind and soul today. Download the Hallow app at Hallow.com slash Jordan. That’s Hallow.com slash Jordan. Hallow.com slash Jordan for an exclusive three month free trial of all 10,000 plus prayers and meditations. Yeah, well, it’s also necessary for people who are, who find themselves in hot water legally and ethically to sort things out for themselves so that they know where they took the wrong steps. I mean, the goal of analyzing a piece of misbehavior, let’s say if the goal is atonement, what that means is you have to know exactly where you stepped wrong right from the beginning of the process. And that means you also have to know where you’re guilty, but about things that were actually peripheral to the event, or maybe you shouldn’t have been guilty about them at all. It’s like, no, this is the cardinal mistake. This is the mistake. This is the pathway. This is what you’re guilty of, not these things. This is what anyone would have done in your situation because lots of times people will do something that looks terrible on casual glance and may even be terrible. But you listen to the full account and you think, oh, if I was in that situation, I would have done something far worse. Right. And then that makes the whole notion of guilt much more complex. There’s a woman who’s in jail at the moment in the US who killed a man who had repeatedly exploited her violently, sexually, and then posted the videos online and profited from them. It’s like, well, she definitely killed him. She shot him, I believe, in court. But was she guilty? Well, there’s a complicated, probably of something. She got herself in that situation and for however she managed that and then couldn’t disentangle herself from it. And that’s not good. So obviously you would presume some culpability on her part in that entire sequence. But trying to entangle that, that’s quite the bloody rat’s nest. That is. Fortunately, I don’t ever get involved in… I don’t like judging people. I don’t think it’s in my job. I don’t think it’s right. I just have to represent them and do the best I can for them. Obviously without misleading the court. But I don’t like judging people. Part of all the reasons you’re kind of alluding to it, it’s kind of complicated knowing who’s guilty of what. There’s an old saying, I think it’s a Russian proverb that says, don’t judge people because it’s too flattering to the devil. I don’t know exactly what it means, but I think it means that you’re giving too much credit to the devil. Right, right, right. Well, the devil is the adversary. That’s the fundamental… That’s what Satan means. The word is adversary. And so, yeah, well, one of the things you learn if you’re a clinician and you have any sense is also why you don’t offer people advice. It’s like, I don’t know what the hell you should do. Maybe you and I could figure it out together with some really careful thought, but I can’t. Most people are in situations that are sufficiently complex so that casual advice is just not helpful at all. And there’s a real arrogance in that. It’s the same arrogance of judgment. It’s like… Yeah, well, judgment’s often bolstering yourself up, really. Yes, definitely. Yes, definitely. For some comparative advantage. I hate the idea of judging. I myself, not that I’d ever be a contender, would never want to be a judge. I just hate the idea of judging people. Some of my colleagues at the bar went on, some of my closest friends are judges, and they’re happy and they’re doing great jobs as judges, but I just couldn’t do that job. Yeah, yeah, it’d be interesting to talk to a judge with a lot of experience to find out how they navigate the moral pitfalls of being in that position and how they reconcile themselves to it, given this sort of complexity that we’re describing. I expect their say, and rightly so, their role is to judge. Society needs people like them to judge, and they do their best to judge honestly and faithfully within the law. And so it’s an important role. It is, it is, but it does set up these moral conundrums that we’ve been describing.