by Masoninblue
I Worry About Mark O’Mara and George Zimmerman
10:06 pm in Uncategorized by Masoninblue
Cross posted from Frederick Leatherman Law Blog.
O’Mara -“The client always calls the shots,” his lawyer, Mark O’Mara said Thursday.
George Zimmerman. Photo by Seminole County Sheriffs / Wikimedia Commons.
One of the most contentious issues in the field of criminal defense is how to handle the difficult client.
Many lawyers are like Mark O’Mara and devote their efforts to assisting their clients to make informed decisions. I have seen some lawyers, for example, ask a jury to sentence their client to death because that is the outcome the client desired.
I have seen too many people change their minds after being sentenced to death, so I decided long ago to refuse to facilitate a client’s desire to commit suicide.
For some reason, I have had more than my share of difficult clients where we disagreed on strategy and desired outcomes. I refused to allow the client to drive the bus over a cliff and, if it came down to irreconcilable differences, I moved to withdraw.
GZ is the quintessential difficult client. He is paranoid, secretive, fearful, angry, stubborn, doesn’t trust anyone, controlling, believes he’s smarter than anyone else, manipulative, and probably delusional. It’s absolutely clear that he does not feel any emotional distress or regret for having killed TM.
His claim that TM died as part of “God’s Plan” exhibits a frightening dissociation from reality and a willingness to kill without any sense of responsibility or regret, if he deems it necessary to do so. In other words, if he should find himself in another situation where he believes he is cornered and needs to kill someone to save face or save his ass, I believe he’s likely to do so and excuse what he did as just carrying out God’s will.
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