“The purpose of the criminal defense attorney to to make sure the prosecutor does his job in proving the case; and then only for the crime the defendant committed and not some more serious crime he didn’t commit.”
Yeah, right, ‘cause that’s what lawyers try to do. Defense lawyers never try to get defendants off altogether. They’re paid all those millions of dollars to make sure people are convicted of the proper, truthful charge. You better believe that if the prosecution offers a better deal than what is deserved by what “crime the defendant committed,” they’ll take it. They’ll take the best deal they can get, regardless of fancy notions like objective justice.
I’m sure what you’ve laid out is what a James Madison would have said, but it bears little resemblance to the way things are. Only prosecutors are held strictly to the standards you’ve described. Defense lawyers are supposed to be zealous. They’re supposed to make it as tough as possible for the prosecution. What bounds them is the practicality of getting off, and their own consciences in certain cases.
If the prosecutor does his job well, and the defendant is guilty, there will almost always be a conviction. Don’t bring up O.J. Simpson. The prosecution made so many blatant errors in judgment and strategy it isn’t funny. Once they agreed to move the trial to downtown LA, the prosecution had an almost impossible task. If his case had been tried in the jurisdiction the murders occurred, OJ would have been convicted in a NY minute.