Question

Criminal Justice

According to your text, what is meant by death row volunteering? Imagine that you are a defense attorney working on the case of a client who is currently on death row. If faced with death row volunteering, how would you handle the situation? What would be the justification(s) for your decision? Would there be any ethical concerns that you might have? Why or why not? If you would have ethical concerns, what would those be? 200 word thanks.

Answer 1

When the convicts who are sentenced to death, forgo their rights to plea for a lesser or lighter punishment than death, it is called as the death row volunteering by the convicts. These convicts accept their death sentence and do not plead for changing their death sentence. In short, they are resigned to their fate. The death row inmates are depressed due to loss of family support, fear of ostracizment from the society, loss of honor, dignity and self-respect, bleak future and strong sense of remorse and guilt for the committing the crime, which led to the punishment.

If one is a defense attorney working on the case of a client who is currently on death row and has volunteered for death row, he/she will have to handle the case very carefully. An attorney has the moral and legal duty to safeguard his/her client's concerns. The attorneys who defend the death row inmates, by virtue of their profession are opposed to the capital punishment. The attorney of such a client faces a grave dilemma whether to let the prisoner die or to find out legal ways to release his/her client from the death penalty. There are no guidelines provided for the attorneys to handle this type of situation. Therefore, an attorney should trust his own instincts and try to both intimidate and persuade the client to appeal. The attorney should have an extensive and heart to heart talk with his client and seek the reasons for his/her client's adamant stand of accepting execution. The attorney should use his arguing and convincing techniques to deter the client from taking such a fatal stance. He/She should use all the tactics up his/her sleeve to discourage the client from volunteering for death row. The attorney should make the client's realize that the client is not thinking clearly due to his/her current mind frame and is behaving irrationally. The client can be emotionally blackmailed by making him think about his family and the life-long grief that will be caused to them due to his/her bereavement. But even after trying his best to change his client's mind, he/she does not achieve success, then the attorney should seek some guidance from the bar association or other attorneys who are experts in this field.

Attorneys are learned people who study the law thoroughly. It is the ethical duty of an attorney to not lead or support an individual to choose death, as it is similar to suicide. Suicide is a crime according to the law and the attorneys are the defenders of law. So their basic duty is to prevent any crime taking place. Human beings know that they cannot indulge in barbarism because the law will catch hold of him. It is against our value system to murder anyone. The ethical concerns facing an attorney, whose client is on the death row are whether to allow the murder of a human being because he has committed a murder or any grave offense, is human life so cheap and what will one achieve if the convict is executed. There is no guarantee that the execution of the death row inmate will help the society or system, as a whole. Capital punishment is a cruel form of punishment. It does not allow the convict any chance to change or redeem his/her life. A good attorney should therefore, try his/her level best to guide and counsel his/her client to appeal and change his/her decision for death row volunteering.