Representing a Guilty Client

Whenever I appear on talk shows, I am criticized for representing guilty clients. "How can you sleep at night," I am asked, "when you help someone who you know is guilty get back on the street?" Replying that I'm part of an adversarial system barely satisfies an audience fearful of crime and fed up with what it perceives as legal gamesmanship.

Alan Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer, 2001