All That is Necessary For Evil toTriumph is For Good Men to Do Nothing

From “Bee Movie”
Giraffe – You’re not another lawyer too, are you?
Mooseblood the Mosquito – I was already a bloodsucking parasite. All I needed was a briefcase.

Steven and I have been married 8 years. In those 8 years I have heard Steven say he wanted to be about a million different things. So 2 years ago when he said he wanted to become a lawyer, I paid as much attention to it as when he said he wanted to be a teacher, or a chaplain, or a computer tech guy, or a satellite tech guy. In fact he could have said I want to become a garbage man and it would have have had the same affect, “Of course, honey whatever you want to do I’ll support it.” All the while thinking like THAT’S ever gonna happen. In all fairness, I’ve also said I want to become a number of different things and Steven’s also had the exact same response. I think it’s only natural for people in their 20s to want to do all sorts of wild things. The difference for us being we have a mortgage and children and responsibilities (when did that happen?!) that come first.

Anyways, back to the lawyer thing. His decision came in the middle of the nasty stupid trial (that we never really talked about on the website for very real fear of retribution). I’m still kinda pissed about the whole situation. My husband gets wrongly accused of a crime and wastes 15 months of his life defending himself (and the guilty culprit gets away with 30K in his pocket, yeah for our present judicial and military systems). What kind of crap is that? It was only natural that he say, hey I could do this, help other people in this situation. When he kept on saying it well after the trial was over, well I got angry. You can’t do that, lawyers are awful nasty greedy people, especially criminal defense lawyers. What honest, good person would want to become a criminal defense lawyer?

A few months ago I started reading Jodi Picoult in an almost religious frenzy. I would devour one book right after another. The majority of them having do with someone being accused of murder (or something equally as awful) and the trial that ensues. The story being told through the accused, the prosecutors, the criminal defendants, the families, and the friends. They’re investigations into the human persons, how not everything is so black and white, but a whole lot of gray sometimes.

My fear of what could happen to my husband was very clearly spelt out in the the second chapter of the book Plain Truth. Essentially a defense attorney who initially had every intention of being a good righteous lawyer, after a few years of practice succumbed to the evils of the world and got a child molester off. Although it was the biggest triumph as a defense attorney, it was also the elements of her own nightmares. “I came out and ran the water to wash my hands. I hiked up the silk sleeves of my suit jacket and began to scrub, working lather between my fingers, into my nails. At a tap on my shoulder I turned to see the bathroom attendant handing me a linen towel. Her eyes were hard and dark as chestnuts. ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘some stains ain’t never gonna come clean.’ ”

In another book though Change of Heart, is the reason why he wants to become a lawyer (BTW, ~spoiler alert~ I’m completely going to destroy the book’s ending for anyone who wants to read, so skip the rest of this paragraph if you want to). A death row inmate who was charged for committing a very nasty murder and is really and truly innocent. In the end, he is hung without anyone knowing or suspecting the truth due to a decision his initial lawyer made.

So that’s the reason he wants to become a lawyer. If heaven forbid, that ever happens again, that someone I know and love gets accused of a crime they didn’t commit, I’d much, much, much prefer a good, honest man defending me instead of a greedy nasty one.