There’s a high-profile court case being held in Nashville, TN involving four former college football athletes for the University of Vanderbilt who are being accused of rape. The trial is in its opening stage where the defense attorney is offering the jury his clients’ point of view and other reasons for why one or more of his clients are not guilty. To most people this is the stage where defense lawyers earn a bad reputation – and for many of them it’s for good reason; and this trial has definitely helped to put a check-mark in the negative category. And why is that? Because of the plea that the defense attorney is making on behalf of his client who he claims is not responsible for what he did to a young woman sexually (i.e. rape) because they were living in a highly experimental and sexualized atmosphere and because he was too drunk to know what he was doing!
I guess from now on in the eyes of this attorney a murderer, a thief, a liar, a child-molester, and every other criminal, including drunk-drivers, can enter a plea that says they aren’t responsible for what they have done because they were too drunk to know better. And some people actually wonder why attorneys get a bad reputation.
