Dear Editor,
While shopping for a “Welkom” sign to put on the front door, I met an acquaintance in the hardware store. We chit chat a little and then the situation with the guilty verdicts came up. During that conversation “I do not defend criminals” was expressed. When I heard that it rocketed me back about 40 years.
I was working on Aruba between 1979 and 1982 and stayed at my parents’ home. My father had stopped sailing , so we saw each other every day and of course had some good conversations. He accepted me being a police officer, but he would always hint that I would make a good lawyer. During one of those conversations, he said to me lawyers can protect people also. All they have to do is refuse to defend criminals. I never remembered that until I spoke to that gentleman a few days ago.
My father summed it up this way. When the criminal realizes that he cannot get the lawyer of his choice to defend him, he would be reluctant to commit crime. The crime rate would go down significantly. At that time I told him that the court appoints lawyers for defendants who cannot afford a lawyer.
That might be so, he said, but the routine criminal knows which lawyer is good at what. But when he has no choice but to accept the one which is assigned to him, that’s a different story. They will not have access to seasoned criminal lawyers and would realize that it is not worth it. Crime rate will go down; less people in prison, including those 27 years and younger. With less convicts, no need for expanding or building new prisons, lawyers will have more time to adequately attend to civil cases. The rightful people will get what is entitled to them and the statistics would help to eradicate that dreadful word “corrupt”. I am sitting here typing this letter and blaming myself for not remembering what I would say is one of the most realistic things that my father had said to me years ago.
This past week I was told a few things as a consequence of the letters that I have written to you. One of them is what a friend of mine once told me. He said, “If people follow what you write they won’t get locked up, because you have goat mouth.” Another one told me one time that I am working with the Dutchman. I literally laughed out loud, because he did not realize that I was a policeman for years and that I could know something about law enforcement and crime detection.
But the latest one that I heard is the truth and staring us in our face – “Right now the word parliamentarian seems to be synonymous to prisoner”. I applaud where it came from, because who else is left to highlight and denounce that kind of behaviour?
The following might be challenged by skeptics, but I believe that basically the human being is good and where there is a will there’s a way. These last few days we have come to realize that money is not the cure for sickness, but that it is still so that the love of money is the root of all evil, so my question is: Can “not defending crime” be a deterrent to crime?
Russell A. Simmons
