I think it's implied in this OP that the author did not see any meaning in his lawyer job, there's nothing "bigger than him" he's working for, just making a lot of money keeping actual criminals out of prison. There's no "bigger" purpose in that.
As a party clown/musician there is purpose - he can make kids happy, he knows that "something in his future is expected of him", his work is extremely meaningful to the kids, he catches glimpses of that (whether he actually understands that is hard to say, he'd have to be able to 100% become a child to see the child's point of view).
"just making a lot of money keeping actual criminals out of prison".
If the defendants were not found guilty then they are not "criminals". Unless you were in court then you really ought not to judge. (Though I am aware the the American justice system is probably way less perfect than it claims to be).
It is perfectly fine to judge. Having been a juror in criminal cases involving repeat offenders and lived in cities with crime problems, I can tell you that actual criminals being found "not guilty" or guilty and given probation (nothing) is MORE common than justice being served. The system is comically far from perfect.
Can you tell us how you know that some people found not guilty really were guilty? Was it a case of the jury thinking that the accused was more likely guilty than not, but there was still reasonable doubt? Or did the accused admit to an act which many laypeople would consider a crime, but then got acquitted on a technicality? Or were you privy to information and insight denied to your fellow jurors?
Obviously, I used emotional hyperbolic language and I admit it. There's no way I (or any observer after the fact) can definitively tell if any one person is guilty or not, let alone make a factual statement about many people.
HOWEVER, having lived in cities and neighborhoods with crime problems (eg Baltimore,Philly), I am aghast at how dysfunctional the criminal justice system is. If you look at public court case records of offenders, you'll see a peculiar pattern. Robbery, Burglary and violent crime offenders are RARELY limited to ONE case. Usually, there are several or even more offenses. The outcome of these cases is almost never a clear-cut "guilty" followed by prison time. Instead they're a convoluted series of pleas, followed by a drastically reduced sentence or PBJ (probation before judgement). A PBJ is effectively nothing to a repeat offender, because many continue to be charged with crimes WHILE ON PROBATION, and there are virtually NO additional consequences for those violations of probation.
The kinds of problems I am talking about are described in detail by Paige Croyder (http://pagecroyder.blogspot.com/). If you're interested how criminal justice "works" in Baltimore, she's the best resource.
The angst felt by the laywer who quit to become a clown, is not a surprise. Anyone who has a conscious will have a difficult time with being a lawyer in a criminal case (this goes for both sides).
> repeat offenders ... actual criminals being found "not guilty"
One does not have to be guilty of the crime for which one is being tried, to be a criminal.
Regardless of the result, if a repeat offender is on trial, then there is a criminal in the dock. If said repeat offender is found not guilty, then, regardless of actual guilt of the offence in question, a criminal has been found "not guilty".
However, it would be appropriate to take angdis to task on the claim that this is "MORE common than justice being served", as that would require one to chart the difference between actual guilt and verdict for a significant majority of trials. That would be very tricky information to come by.
If your interpretation of angdis' comment is correct, I'm even more at a loss. What is wrong with people being found not guilty of one offence even though they've previously been convicted of others? In what way is it an example of justice not being served?
angdis doesn't say that the correct acquittal of repeat offenders is not justice being served, just that the total number of acquittals of criminals is greater than the total number of times that justice is served.
Justice is the sum of all correct results. (i.e. where the accused is guilty and found guilty, and where the accused is innocent and found not guilty)
The number of Criminals found not guilty is the sum of all incorrect acquittals of all offenders (guilty but found not guilty), and correct acquittals of repeat offenders.
Consider an example:
Given 10 trials of repeat offenders, made up of 5 guilty and 5 innocent.
If every trial ends with the correct result, then justice has been served 10 times, and 5 criminals have been found not guilty.
However, If they are all found not guilty, then justice has been served 5 times, but 10 criminals have been found not guilty.
In that case, and assuming (1) the correctness of angdis' contention that criminals are found not guilty more often than justice is served and (2) a conviction rate of at least two-thirds in the court system he/she is talking about (which is not a high bar), there are more wrongful convictions than correct ones.
Yes, given 9 cases, and 3 wrongful acquittals, the remaining 6 guilty verdicts can have at most 2 instances of justice being done (i.e. true positives), meaning that the remaining 4 are false convictions. If any of those acquittals were the correct result, then even more people need to do porridge in order to make angdis' assertion correct.
I'm not saying that angdis isn't wrong, just that you seemed to be rebutting the wrong point. In fact, as I stated in my first response, proving the assertion requires information that one simply couldn't have, i.e. a chart of actual guilt vs verdict. Plenty of guilty convicts will protest their innocence, and no one, having been acquitted, will then go on to say, "Well, actually, I did it, so long suckers!" I'd add that, as you point out, this is a pretty outrageous claim, so the burden of proof truly lies with the one making it.
In fact, I've oversimplified, because there was actually another clause in angdis' original assertion, "or guilty and given probation (nothing)", this adds another set of results to the group that makes up the "more than justice" list: any probation sentence, which could be an appropriate sentence for the convict (which is justice, so it cancels out), repeat offenders being found guilty of a crime of which they are innocent, but sentenced appropriately for the charge (not justice, but also still a guilty verdict) or inappropriately lenient ( not justice). By making the latter claim, one is declaring oneself a greater authority on sentencing and its goals and outcomes than the judges whose business it is to know all about sentencing.
This means that false guilty verdicts for minor crimes could still go on the left, if the accused is a criminal.
[Replying to myself r/than frozbozz as I seem to have hit some kind of nesting limit.]
> just that you seemed to be rebutting the wrong point
It's more that I'm questioning the interpretation you've put on angdis' initial comment. Your logic is impeccable, but it leads to conclusions that are so at odds with the tone of his/her post that I feel you are crediting him/her with too much coherence and consistency.
person committing a crime is a criminal, no matter if justice system finds him guilty (I mean come on, we all know similar cases). reciting some law textbooks seems a bit ridiculous in face of reality
Sure but in the absence of other evidence, only one person really knows the truth. How can you be sure that a person you think is criminal is actually one? If you have the evidence to know that, then you should be able to convict them.
he found no meaning being a lawyer, but he found creativity and love being a kids musician. Suffering leads to nothing, it's the meaning leads you through suffering.
