High profile legal cases often involve high profile attorneys, largely because the rich and famous can afford the best and most experienced lawyers to represent them. However, just because an attorney is expensive and well-known doesn’t mean he or she isn’t human and will never make a mistake. While we all like to think fancy lawyers posses the kind of magic that Perry Mason once brought to the (TV) courtroom, real life is a lot more complex than legal television dramas.
Unfortunately, legal blunders both in the courtroom and behind the scenes can have devastating effects on the lives of real people. Murderers may get off scott-free, innocents may be sent to jail or worse, and justice very well may fail to be done. So, in what ways do lawyers make devastating mistakes, and how does it affect everyone involved? Here are three of the biggest legal mistakes we just can’t forget:
Drew Peterson Hearsay Blunder
It was less than two weeks ago that former Bolingbrook, IL police sergeant, Drew Peterson, was found guilty of murdering his third wife, Kathleen Savio. But the whole case was very nearly blown by a rookie-level blunder committed by prosecutor Kathleen Patton. Much of the evidence was based on hearsay allowed by the judge under a 2009 law that allows judges to “admit hearsay evidence in first-degree murder cases if prosecutors can prove the victim’s death was directly connected to a defendant’s efforts to prevent them from testifying.”
The blunder came when Patton asked the witness about Savio seeking a protection order against Peterson—a topic that the judge had specifically told her not to bring up. According to Patton, she was just reading her prepared list of questions and forgot that the judge had forbidden that one—an excuse akin to telling the state patrol you didn’t realize how fast you were going. The judge allowed the trial to continue with instructions to the jury to disregard the question, but he very well could have declared a mistrial based on that one mistake. Either way, the blunder created grounds for appeal.
OJ Simpson Glove Blunder
Perhaps one of the most high-profile trials of modern history was that of OJ Simpson, who was accused of murdering his wife Nicole Simpson. A key moment in the trial occurred when Simpson was asked to try on a glove that had the victim’s blood on it. The glove didn’t fit, which helped lead the jury to find Simpson not guilty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Recently, in a panel discussion to deconstruct the trial, attorney Alan Dershowitz stated that prosecutor Chris Darden’s decision to make Simpson try on the glove “gave the case away” and that he couldn’t imagine “anything stupider.” Darden defended his blunder by asserting that Simpson defender Johnny Cochran had tampered with the glove so that it wouldn’t fit.
GM and JP Morgan Billion Dollar Blunder
Legal blunders don’t just occur in courtrooms—many happen behind the scenes in the luxurious offices of even the oldest and most venerated law firms. Take, for example, the snafu reported on by Dan Rather in June 2011, which affected General Motors, JP Morgan Chase, the U.S. Treasury, and potentially many others. According to reports, the highly regarded law firm Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP may have accidentally given away $1.5 billion that belonged to their clients, one of which was the investment bank JP Morgan Chase.
To make a very long story short, JP Morgan Chase made a loan to General Motors, claiming $1.5 billion in GM assets and cash as collateral. Later, when GM was heading for bankruptcy, the federal government paid JP Morgan the $1.5 billion out of TARP money. However, it came out that GM’s lawyers had filed a document a year earlier by mistake that said JP Morgan had given up their claim to the money. The mistake might never have been noticed except that lawyers for other unsecured GM creditors discovered the error and pounced, asking that the payout be revoked from JP Morgan and, instead, paid to their own clients. JP Morgan isn’t the innocent bystander it seems to be, either, because its own in-house lawyers mistakenly signed off on the document. Apparently nobody was really paying attention—a blunder that could cost the company, not to mention GM’s lawyers, billions.
