Some Lawyers are great, some are crooks, some are probably stupid.

Something that reads like no right-thinking defense lawyer is likely to enter into a joint* defense arrangement with a proven snitch who sold out his own clients to save his hide.

And every one of his clients who happens to be convicted is likely to raise an ineffective assistance claim - they didn't feel they could confide in him b/c of his history (for starters)....

Eesh.

§ 356 German Criminal Code:

Violating the attorney-client relationship

(1) An attorney or other person rendering legal assistance who in relation to matters confided to him in this capacity in the same legal matter serves both parties with counsel and assistance in breach of his duty shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.

Naively, I hired a local attorney on the "advice" of Madison County sheriff's officers prior to being bailed out.

My attorney pressured me to plead guilty by scaring me into believing that if I contested the charges, I would almost certainly be sent to the state penitentiary for five years.

At the time, I did not know that I had been entrapped thru a conspiracy.  I only thought that I was delivering sealed gallon cans of motorcyle paint to a friend of his.  Due to a recent shoulder operation, I was unable to even lift the cans into the trunk of my car and I had no reason to try and pry any of the cans open to see if they really did contain only paint.

My friend had borrowed money from me right after my surgery and he kept stalling on paying me back and finally told me that if I would do him the favor of delivering an order of paint to a customer of his in Mississippi (my "friend" owns Thurmond Supply Co. in Houston), the cost of the paint would pretty much cover what I was owed.  The "paint" turned out to be marijuana.

For those who might be skeptical of what I'm saying, keep in mind that prior to my hospitalization and surgery, I had NOT seen my friend in about two years time and I had no idea what he had been up to during the interim or since.

I'm almost certain that my lawyer sold me out, and NOT just because he was featured on 60 minutes in a segment about a corruption case that he was alleged to have been involved in.

I was led to believe that I would receive a probation sentence which would be removed after successful completion of a five year probation.

While we have not found the government's conduct sufficiently outrageous to warrant the dismissal of his Indictment, we do believe that Glass' and Turow's conduct was reprehensible. Because the district judge is more familiar with the attorneys' conduct, we assume he will refer this matter to The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, 203 N. Wabash, Suite 1900, Chicago, Illinois 60601, for appropriate action.

Glass was an interesting character...his wife during those years was Patti Glass, who divorced him and married Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman, killed along with Nicole Brown Simpson. Glass went on to commit more crimes, went to prison and died shortly after getting out.

Here's the Government's view, from its response to Ofshe's petition for writ of cert:

There is nothing inherently outrageous in using as an informant a co-conspirator who happens to be the target's defense attorney, so long as there is no attempt to intrude into a protected
attorney-client relationship and no intrusion results.  It is not unknown for attorneys to engage in criminal conduct with or on behalf
of their clients, and a law enforcement investigation of either or both parties does not automatically infringe a constitutionally
protected relationship....

To be sure, it is not usual that an attorney and co-conspirator becomes an informant against his client.  But if there is good reason to believe that the attorney is not currently engaged in the
representation of his client on a pending charge or that a particular conversation between the two will touch on nothing but joint future crimes, and if the attorney is careful and under strict instructions to avoid intruding into attorney-client or defense strategy matters, treating the attorney like a cooperating co-conspirator does not "'shock() * * * the universal sense of justice'" ... And where the investigation does not produce any tainted evidence or influence in
any way the ongoing prosecution -- indeed, where the prosecutor does not even know of the cooperation -- there is no resulting Sixth
Amendment violation.

   "but you wouldn't need to lift or open a can of "paint", to realize it wasn't liquid. unless these were 55 Gal. drums (and even then, i'd think you'd notice the difference), the odds are pretty good any reasonable person would have wondered exactly what was in those containers, since it clearly wasn't liquid.

unless these were supposed to be cans of powdered paint mix, which you didn't note."

I guess I didn't make it clear that because I had a shoulder separation and my right arm was in a sling, I couldn't even lift something as relatively light as a gallon of paint.

My "friend" loaded the cans in the trunk of my car.  At the time, I had no reason to question or doubt him that he was putting anything into my car other than what he said he was putting in it.

If they had been see-through cans, then yes, I would have known what was in them. But they weren't.  They were regular (sealed) paint cans.

Ask anyone who has suffered from a shoulder separation that was bad enough to require surgery.
They'll tell you that a shoulder separation is one of the most painful injuries imaginable.