Smart clients, foolish choices

Tom Lincoln of Macondo Law and The Best Defense has a morality story about a bright client in a bad bind, scrambling to keep one step ahead of the system and digging himself in deeper with every step.

Many, many p.d.s will relate to this debacle: the huge potential sentence if convicted, the client burning through previous attorneys, the unexpectedly lenient offer that the client rejects by saying, shave two more years off that and I'll take it, the client's magical thinking that the state's witnesses suddenly will be filled with love and will refuse to testify against him, the hiring another attorney behind appointed counsel's back on the eve of trial...

Don't need to be a veterano to see how this story turns out.