Criminal Justice System: The Ultimate Power Imbalance Exposed
Video Transcript
Andrew Dósa – Criminal Defense Attorney – Oakland, CA
“If I may plug me and my profession, that’s why people have me. It’s because the government power that is brought to bear against anybody is so great, considering the resources that are available. When I stand in front of a jury at trial, I tell a jury, ‘there’s my client and there’s me. And the only other entity out there that’s going to protect them against government intrusion that’s improper is you. But in contrast, the District Attorney has police forces available. If the Alameda County sheriff’s office and a local police agency were doing a tandem investigation into my client, the resources of both of those agencies are available for the benefit of the District Attorney. They have investigators that they have on staff, they have the resources to hire a doctor to do an examination of records. They have, almost, not unlimited, but an extraordinary amount of resources.’
Most of my clients, literally just have me. And the reality is that I always work way more than I am getting paid for, because no one could afford any private counsel unless you were fabulously wealthy and there are very few of us that can do that. So there’s always the challenge of making do on a shoe-string budget for the defense. So that just means that I typically work harder, and sometimes do my own investigation. I serve subpoenas myself, if I don’t have the option of hiring a process server. So the resources that the District Attorney has is so much greater than what the defense has…”
