Cochran Jr.’s Advocacy

Yesterday at SM I chanced upon a book on sale and prominent on the book’s jacket is the author’s picture and name - JOHNNY L. COCHRAN, JR. The title, in much smaller text, is “Journey to Justice”. The price – P 149.00. The name rings a bell. Oh yeah, the OJ Simpson trial. How could I forget. To the Americans, especially those who closely followed the case, his was a household name – the legal strategist responsible for OJ’s acquittal.

 At the back of the jacket reads a short essay by Cochran. It made me go straight to the counter.

Here’s an excerpt:

“I am an advocate because I understand that while you may be able to guarantee that you won’t commit a crime, you can’t guarantee that you won’t be charged with a crime. And if you were charged with a crime, or if your mother or your father or your sister or your brother were charged with a crime, wouldn’t you want every protection afforded you by the Constitution? Or would you feel that you had too many rights? And if you stood wrongly accused, who’s the victim then?

When I walk into a courtroom, I’m not merely defending the individual who stands accused. I’m defending a legal system that guarantees the presumption of innocence and every individual’s right to equal protection under the law. The only way that you or I can be assured of our right to a fair trial is if every citizen in the land is assured of his/her right to a fair trial. When one of us is denied justice, all of us are denied justice. This is no slippery slope argument, it’s a fundamental and irrefutable truth of life in a democracy.”

He then went on to say: 

“Let us be clear and let us make no mistake about this – while court records will designate at trial as The People vs. The Accused, each time that courtroom is brought to order, we are all on trial, every one of us, and we are all the people, and we are all entitled to zealous representation.

I am an advocate. I have had many clients but a single cause. Justice must be served.”

Of course I’m familiar with the constitutional guarantees that should embed a criminal trial. But what killed me was his passionate and almost pompous proclamation that – to defend an accused is to defend the legal system itself. He indeed made it sound like an irrefutable truth and quite frankly, it is quite a good slogan to use every time I go to court. (I just hope this will stick through in the next court setting – a good two months later.)
In our case (Philippine setting), however, where private practitioners can appear as private prosecutors – this peculiar situation somehow deadens such concept of advocacy into a mere catch phrase. Imagine a private counsel scheduled to appear for three cases in the same courtroom one morning. The first case, he appears as private prosecutor under the supervision of the fiscal. When the second case is called, he then appears as counsel for the accused opposite the fiscal. And when the third case is called, he then revert his appearance to private prosecutor under the authority of the fiscal. Of course, no matter which side you’re on – justice must be served.