r/news • u/FreeChickenDinner • 4d ago

West Virginia couple charged with trafficking their adopted Black children to be used as ‘slaves,’ authorities allege

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/us/west-virginia-adopted-black-children-slaves-reaj/index.html
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u/brookelynfd 4d ago edited 4d ago

According to this USA Today article his lawyer really tried to imply this was all a misunderstanding and the teens like it. Smh

”During the June 11 arraignment hearing, Whitefeather's attorney, Mark Plants, called the barn where the 14 and 16-year-old were found locked in a “teenage clubhouse”

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u/stdexception 4d ago

Being a defense attorney for these cases must be tough. They are obligated to defend them as best as they can, even if the evidence is overwhelming. Pleading insanity might have been a better call, though.

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u/QuitWhinging 4d ago

Yeah, even the scum of the Earth deserve to have some kind of legal representation; otherwise, the system becomes even more unfair than it already is, and innocent people begin to suffer alongside the guilty. I'm not in criminal defense, but I am a defense attorney who has had to defend people I strongly disagree with, and it's definitely tough because you have to come up with some argument in their defense, even if it's not necessarily a good one. And you have to work with your clients' wishes. I imagine these two are not the best clients. They easily could have rejected the first few arguments the defense attorney would have offered up before arriving at this one.

As far as I know, pleading insanity isn't always a great strategy either. It rarely works (especially if your clients are bad actors, which most people are) and, even when successful, people often spend more time locked up in a mental hospital than they would have spent in prison. Prison at least offers a fairly definite sentence; a mental hospital keeps you until they decide that you're healthy, which may never happen.

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u/Nebbii 4d ago

I heard something that makes sense is that they try their best on this case to leave absolutely no grounds or doubt they weren't represented fairly so if they go to jail, they deserve it absolutely