Conflict of Interest in Law

Innocence

Presumed Innocence

The notion of presumed innocence is meant to ensure that a fail trial is received by all who are accused of crimes in the United States' criminal justice system. If there was a presumption of guilt, or even if there was not a presumption of innocence, the accused would be treated as criminals before having a trial by their peers. In other words, truly innocent people would end up being regarded and treated as criminals during the arrest and trial process, and this would be a miscarriage of justice in and of itself and would also be more likely to lead to false guilt sentences. Unfortunately, however, this concept does not appear to truly be believed in by the American public at large, by the media, and by certain individuals and institutions in the criminal justice system -- when someone is accused, especially of a sensational crime, they are often tried and convicted in the public eye almost immediately. Our society appears to love having a villain to direct anger towards, and is both rash and vicious in its pursuit of righteousness rather than simple right.

The primary conflict of interest in Presumed Innocent is, of course, the fact that Rusty Sabich is made the prosecutor and in part the investigator of Polhemus' death when he had a previous sexual/romantic relationship with the deceased. This leads to him hiding evidence that might implicate him, instead of recusing himself and immediately divulging all relevant information as would have been ethically responsible. The fact that he was not honest at the outset about his conflict of interest makes him seem that much more guilty later on. Rusty's control of the investigation and his installation of a friend on the police force to head the investigation also creates a conflict of interest, as this detective now has conflicts regarding Rusty. A potential conflict of interest, even if it does not manifest in dishonest behavior, creates the sense that there must be dishonesty at work, and thus sullies the criminal justice system without any actual behavior entering into it.

Conflicts of interest are most definitely of legal importance in business settings, as they can make certain deals invalid and can lead to further lawsuits and even to potential criminality. A consultant that works for more than one company in the same industry, for example, might be seen as having a conflict of interest if he or she is receiving compensation from two or more companies pursuing the same contract, as it would be possible for them to give poor advice to one company and better advice to another without revealing the difference in advice (and/or in fees collected). One of way of dealing with this would be to have all consultants sign a disclosure in which they make all of their other relationships known; if a relationship is found that was not disclosed it would be possible to sue for a return of consulting fees and possibly even for damages in certain situations/outcomes.