Before we start:

• I’m changing my publishing schedule from twice a week to once a week;
• New posts will be published every Wednesday.

Now back to your regurarly scheduled programming, that comes with appropriate title.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein

Today I’m gonna talk about one thing that might stop moving – the trial. Small disclaimer, in my country trial delays are possible and in big criminal trials very common. I do understand that in different legal systems and/ or countries this problem might not exist, but in my small European country, laws against trial delays are not very effective.

So, how delaying the trial works. Actually it’s very simple, just use all legal means possible. Most often, trial delays happen in criminal cases. Where most of the time, defense tries to delay trial as much as possible, even for several years.

Reason why this works is because criminal trials, especially big ones, take longer time just by themselves. And now imagine lawyers sick leave, new lawyer coming in, now defendant’s in hospital and other reasons why trial can’t happen, stacked on top of already lenghty process. Nightmare, if I say so myself. Nightmare for all involved sides.

But I’m not gonna look into how and why law’s “allow” this. I want to try to find how lawyers can influence this process and what does it mean. On the one hand, it’s absolutely possible that something happens and trial can’t continue at the moment, and that’s fine. But if “something” happens all the time, seems suspicious to me. In my opinion, deliberately delaying trial in criminal case means only one thing – admiting to crime. Otherwise, wouldn’t you want this to be over faster?

On the other hand, there are so much people involved to make this happen, most inportantly lawyer. Of course, what happens between lawyer and client stays hidden, but if client wants trial delayed lawyer doesn’t have many options. One, stop working with this client. Two, trying to convince client that it isn’t best game plan. Three, go with it. Sad thing is, it is not easy to suddenly stop working with client, especially if you have worked with them for some time, nor to convince someone who’s life is on the line.

My point is, it all starts with the lawyer. Not the legal system, not the law, but the lawyer. Because, as long as we are gonna be fine with our clients malicious wishes, we won’t be staying true to our jobs nature. To end this post, I wish for everyone to do only things they believe are true and things they are not ashamed of doing.

/M.P./