By the good grace of God I am not an attorney; however, I have worked with and for several over the past few decades and have some familiarity with professional responsibility. However, professional responsibility or “ethics” can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. What is OK in VA may not be acceptable in FL, and vice versa. In no jurisdiction is releasing ‘privileged’ information acceptable but I don’t see where the ‘privilege’ has been broached here.
You’ve put the cart before the horse re the advice you’re claiming these lawyers gave to Zimmerman. I.e., Hannity. They said they would have advised him not to ... not that they DID advise him, because he cut off communication with the lawyers before contacting Hannity AND the prosecutor. So that is taking as fact certain assumptions that are simply not true. And removes that from the ‘privilege’ which you’re claiming they violated.
How is their withdrawing and making public the reason “privileged communication (or lack of it thereof)?” What, exactly, is the ‘privilege’ that you’re claiming they’ve violated? An Article III court would insist that they give reasons and examples. But you would have them just walk away, quietly, from the loudest case in the public opinion court in which they’ve already made their appearance, and say “no comment?” They’ve been the contact point for Zimmerman with the public and the media? But, like Zimmerman, you’d have them disappear, leaving the public forum to Sharpton?
It’s not up to anyone except, perhaps, George Zimmerman to question the attorneys’ motive in stepping forward to represent him. Those who condemn them today thought them heroes when, in the face of the Sharpton/NAACP/MSM attacks, they stepped forward to take the unpopular position of defending George Zimmerman. I don’t know why they did it, nor does anyone else on this board. But if anyone was ‘left out to dry,’ it was these attorneys whose client cut off communication, then took it upon himself to contact a) Hannity and b) the prosecutor.
I really don’t care about these two attorneys, but I do hope Zimmerman gets his act together in short order and lines up attorneys with whom he will communicate, and not go off half-cocked as he’s done in the past few days.
By the grace of God I am an attorney and quite frankly what these attorneys did to publicly put their client in a bad light and to publicly state that they would not have advised their client to do the course of action he is taking IS a violation of ethics. After their representation had ended they were ethically obligated not to make any public statements about how they might have handled the case differently or what advice they would have given their former client.
If, by the grace of God you had become an attorney and then did what these guys did, then by the grace of God you just might have had your license revoked.
If the leaks all over this afternoon’s news are correct, Zimmerman has more to worry about than the behavior of his former counsel.
I have never had an appreciation for showboat attorneys. But this is an extremely high profile case. They were ‘entered’ in the only ‘court’ that existed before the charges that supposedly will be filed later today. Because of Zimmerman’s own behavior they were forced to withdraw. They appeared before the court in which they were entered.
Since you are an attorney, how would you have handled withdrawing from such a high profile case under this set of circumstances? And would ‘no comment’ not have raised more questions about Zimmerman in a volatile, high profile case?
At this point I really am concerned about Zimmerman’s own well-being. Much was made of Trayvon’s youth, but George Zimmerman himself is only 28.