Ochoa, Neil Ian S.

Legal Counseling 2

2015400060

Buried Bodies

This piece highlights the conflict between a lawyer’s fiduciary duty to his client and a

lawyer’s duty in the administration of justice. The rule for lawyers is to maintain a confidential

relationship with their clients so that the latter will trust their lawyers in disclosing information

that will help in the resolution of the case. It is also a rule that lawyers must always uphold and

support the administration of justice as an officer of the court as they swore to always make

justice the paramount consideration in handling a case. In this case, Armani and Beige were

burdened with the knowledge that their client was indeed guilty. They want to convict their client

Garrow but they want to somehow win the case by sighting insanity on their client’s part so that

he will not face prison time and be admitted to a mental institution. They deemed this as a win-

win situation as they will not have a burdened conscience by setting free a person who

committed multiple murders and that also their client will not experience being in jail and will be

treated as a patient rather than as a prisoner. It was noble for them in balancing justice and their

client’s well-being but they’ve borderline committed a crime when they failed to report to the

authorities their discovery of the bodies of their client’s victims which could be considered as

obstruction of justice and can result in their disbarment as they did something that is against the

law. In the end the court commended their act of maintaining their fiduciary relationship with

their client. They were commended by the legal community but on the price of a heavy

conscience and having a questionable morality. What they did was not good for their spirit and
personality as they had hardships on denying the victims’ families of what really happened to

them. They also have the burden on their conscience in letting an evil man evade prison time by

going with the insanity-plea which in a way results in the miscarriage of justice. Both lawyers

went above and beyond their duties in ensuring that their client will not be imprisoned which

resulted to emotional anguish to the families of the victims of their client.

Here in the Philippines, if a lawyer tampers with evidence like what Armani and Beige

did, he will be charged with obstruction of justice. But a lawyer could not be compelled to

disclose information that will result as a detriment to his client as confidentiality of information

in a lawyer-client relationship is protected here in the Philippines to maintain the trust and

confidence of a client to his lawyer in disclosing information. But such protection does not cover

information regarding the plan of commission of a crime as the lawyer also has a duty to society

to prevent crime from happening. In the case of People v Sandiganbayan (275 SCRA 505), the

Supreme Court ruled that a lawyer cannot withhold information regarding the commission of a

crime in the future as such is not a privileged information. A lawyer can only withhold

information regarding a crime that was already committed and not information regarding the

future commission of a crime.