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Gilles De Coster assesses the relationship between criminal lawyer and client. Are all criminal lawyers equally good? Which clients are criminal lawyers afraid of? How do you trust a person who has committed an atrocity? How do criminal lawyers deal with a guilty person being acquitted, or an innocent being convicted?
The assisen procedure is extinguishing, but the emotionality and spectacle value of murder processes has remained. The criminal lawyers play - often against will and thanks - their role in the media circus. They feel the impact of social media and leakage from the file. They give their critical view of recent media cases such as the Kasteelmoord, the Vangheluwe file and the Parachute murder. Cases in which they themselves have acted.
We enter the arena of the courtroom and meet the different players. Are all judges equally strict? Is the public prosecutor the natural enemy? How do criminal lawyers deal with colleagues they have as opponents? And what do you say to a client who has received the most severe penalty?
Criminal lawyers play a special role in the age of terror. How does it feel to defend a terror suspect? Do they get to know the person behind the terrorist? What is the ultimate motivation for doing it? It generates publicity, but anyone who defends a public enemy risks becoming one himself. Sven Mary experienced it with Salah Abdeslam, Walter Damen and Abderrahim Lahlali with Sharia4Belgium.
"In the name of security we surrender on our rights and freedoms", several lawyers argue. What are the dangers? Have we returned too much? Have parquet and investigators been given too much power? Are the rights of defense under pressure, is the position of the criminal advocates weakened? Has our constitutional state been threatened? And how do the criminal advocates view the reforms and the fungal cellars of Justice?
Who are the criminal lawyers outside the court? How do they deal with ups and downs, adrenaline and burnout? How much do their family demands? What are the exhaust valves in a job that never stops? And if we know that one in three lawyers lives on a minimum wage: how do they survive as entrepreneurs, in fierce competition with other lawyers? Gilles De Coster goes in search of the person and the manager behind the plea.
