Defending the Guilty is the first book by criminal barrister Alex McBride.  For the most part, it takes us behind the scenes of the criminal justice system, introducing us to the concerned parties, at the bar, at the bench, and in the dock, commenting on its vagaries and educating us as to how it came to exist in its current form.

Aside from his work as a barrister, McBride has also contributed to such publications as Prospect and The New Statesman.  For those that have enjoyed McBride’s contributions to Prospect, there is both good and bad news.  The bad news is that much of the book is lifted wholesale and verbatim from these articles.  The good news is these excerpts have been fleshed out with a wealth of autobiographical and historical legal information.
For those unfamiliar with McBride’s previous output, the book appears as a stream of anecdotes, often detailing McBride’s own defeats, failures and particularly, foul-ups at the bar.  The autobiographical information is often incidental, but the abiding tale throughout is of McBride’s own quest to become a tenant at chambers, struggling through a year in the pupils room, surrounded by those who are both his friends and his competitors.

While this quest is presented in chronological order throughout, it is also interspersed with anecdotes from later in McBride’s professional career.  The reason for this is to shoehorn material into five looser sections or themes.  The overall effect of this approach is jarring, at times giving the impression of looking over the scattered pieces of a lawyer’s scrapbook.

As one would expect from a book thus titled, there is plenty of moral ambiguity.  As a curtain raiser, we are treated to a lunch break in chambers with McBride as he feasts on a luxury sandwich, all the while recounting a description of a particularly grisly crime scene.  The notion of morality plays no further part throughout, nor should it according to the author.  While Abraham Lincoln claimed to never take a case that was “manifestly wrong,” McBride has no such qualms, asking for incriminating evidence to be removed from the trial and brutally cross-examining timid witnesses; for him justice is best served when both prosecution and defence lawyers leave no holds barred.

For all this moral grey area though, McBride never gets to the heart of the really tough issues.  He easily justifies his role as a defence counsel with the appropriate but stock response that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.  We are never offered any more in-depth answer than this, nor is the rarer but far more challenging problem of prosecuting the innocent ever touched upon.

Defending the Guilty is, in the main, a victim of its own dust jacket.  The book is billed as hilarious romp through the world of the criminal justice system, with an eye on the vital question; how do we ensure we convict the guilty and acquit the innocent?

Inasmuch as it provoked several guffaws from this reviewer during reading, it is a success.  As a study on how effective the justice system is at actually dispensing justice, it falls down.  The book never feels like it sets out to answer this question, instead it feels like the war stories of If I Die in a Combat Zone, never setting out to make a moral or political judgement, merely reporting observations from the front line.

Defending the Guilty then, is served best by interpreting it as part social commentary and part bluffer’s guide.  While none of the “big” questions are answered, there is nonetheless plenty of education, on history, etymology, philosophy, legal tradition, and more directly of course, on points of law.  In addition, there is an observant eye cast over the workings of those institutions that so fascinate and repel law abiders.

Overall, for those interested in the law but not enough to spend weeks buried under dry legal tomes, Defending the Guilty is recommended.   Written with an abundance of wit and a fantastic eye for human drama, it packs more than enough punch to keep the reader hooked until the end.  Just don’t go expecting it to renew your faith in justice.

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