The Best Defense Summary

Professor Dershowitz's article on "The Best Defense" details the faults and realities of the criminal justice system. Dershowitz's enumeration of the thirteen "rules" in the legal system shed a negative light not only on the players in the system, but on the whole criminal justice process. He brings to attention that many defendants are in fact guilty, but their guilt, or lack thereof, is not correlated to whether they serve time or not. His position as a professor and lawyer allows him to criticize the system, without fearing income repercussions for divulging certain unsaid secrets kept among the players in the system and give some insight to outsiders who are usually kept out of the loop on the unfairness of the system.

Dershowitz's principle

criticism of the criminal justice system is that lies, and corruption distort the system from one that is dedicated to "providing justice" to one made up of players who are solely focused on their own wins. Throughout his article, mainly in the "rules" listed at the end, Dershowitz highlights many instances where the lies are made up by prosecutors and cops, a sad reality he claims is known by all in the system. Judges, cops, and the prosecutorial team rely on lies and "cheating" to secure a win under their belt, which ultimately leaves the defense attorney with the obligation to "object the admission of the truthful evidence if that evidence was improperly obtained" (19). There is an uneven balance in resources and power in the process, with the prosecutorial team having a lot of discretion, which places burden on the defense team to fight against abridgments on the rights of their clients. Overall, Dershowitz believes that the American justice system is one of the best, as it allows for the protection of the rights of the defendants, but the lies, cheating, and self-interest really corrupts the process.
When Dershowitz claims that "nobody wants justice," he is inferring to the fact that defendants and defense attorneys don't want justice, if justice means that criminals should be proportionally punished for their crimes, but rather seek shorter sentences and acquittals.

Prosecutors and cops are also claimed to not want justice, if justice means setting a man free if there is not enough legal evidence to convict him, but rather believe that justice has prevailed when "the government wins its point" (16). What both teams in the adversary system are looking for is not to get justice, but rather to win. Judges are also said to be following their own agendas, by allowing certain illegally obtained information into the court or cheating the system in order to not cause a "traffic jam." Dershowitz elaborates by stating that this desire for wins is why plea bargaining, which he sees as "destructive," is so widespread; it allows for both teams to get a win. I agree with Dershowitz because scorecards are important to not only attorneys, but also clients who need some sort of proof to corroborate the competence and abilities of their lawyer. People seek to win, which is whey defense attorneys seeks technicalities to keep out certain information because they know that such evidence can affect the verdict. A myth we have uncovered in class is that "the search for truth is secondary to the protection of Individual Rights." If justice was the main goal of the criminal justice system, the search for the truth would be a priority and the jury would be asked to reach a verdict of "guilty" or "innocent" and not "guilty" or "not

guilty."
The criminal justice system is hard to understand and unwind, especially when one is an outsider attempting to make conclusions based on limited knowledge. Dershowitz's article "The Best Defense" gives us a different view point and claim than what was presented to us by District Attorney Rebecca Goodrich, who stated that the government wins whenever justice prevails, but what exactly "justice" means is up to the beliefs of every individual.