I won't review the earlier parts of the episode, that has already been done thoroughly.
This will only speak to the prosecution of Tim Schwimmer, the attorney who visited the location of the other bodies and refused to disclose the location of those bodies to the prosecution.
JURIES do NOT decide whether or not attorney-client privilege exists - that is a matter for a judge only. And, no real judge in the US would find that this was not covered by privilege. And if they did, they would be overturned on appeal shortly thereafter. In real life if privilege exists, then the attorney has no choice.
McCoy himself *admits* that he knows he is asking Schwimmer to violate privilege, but that he should do so because the bar association would overlook it.
Um. NO THEY WOULD NOT. He'd likely be disbarred due to the extreme harm the disclosure would cause to the client. This red herring about him being sentenced to death is ridiculous, there is no theory of "no harm, no foul" in ethics cases. Furthermore, his convictions could be overturned, his death sentence commuted, or any other future possibilities so even McCoy's assertion that this will not possibly harm the client is patently false.
Law & Order: Making people ignorant about the law, one episode at a time.
This will only speak to the prosecution of Tim Schwimmer, the attorney who visited the location of the other bodies and refused to disclose the location of those bodies to the prosecution.
JURIES do NOT decide whether or not attorney-client privilege exists - that is a matter for a judge only. And, no real judge in the US would find that this was not covered by privilege. And if they did, they would be overturned on appeal shortly thereafter. In real life if privilege exists, then the attorney has no choice.
McCoy himself *admits* that he knows he is asking Schwimmer to violate privilege, but that he should do so because the bar association would overlook it.
Um. NO THEY WOULD NOT. He'd likely be disbarred due to the extreme harm the disclosure would cause to the client. This red herring about him being sentenced to death is ridiculous, there is no theory of "no harm, no foul" in ethics cases. Furthermore, his convictions could be overturned, his death sentence commuted, or any other future possibilities so even McCoy's assertion that this will not possibly harm the client is patently false.
Law & Order: Making people ignorant about the law, one episode at a time.