Asian Beacon

A just and righteous God requires wrongs to be righted, and a crime is essentially
a wrong against a fellow human being that has to be righted.
and in so doing, enabling him to restore to
his victims their imago dei.
From the Christian perspective, to
punish because the offender deserves
to be punished is to respect him as a
bearer of God’s image. Better still, if he is
also required to make restitution for his
wrongdoing, he will be taking personal
responsibility for the consequences of his
wrong and in so doing, he will be true to
his personhood as one created in the image
of God.
Of course, as a Christian, I am very
much committed to practising the ethos
of Micah 6:8. The Old Testament prophet
indicted the people of Israel for their sins
declaring, “He has showed you, O man, what
is good. And what does the Lord require of
you? To act justly and to love mercy and to
walk humbly with your God.”
In 2004, I spoke on “Acting Justly”,
based on this text, at the Annual
Dedication Service of the Lawyers
Christian Fellowship during the opening
of the legal year. I reminded them that, as
Christians who are also lawyers, we are
called to uphold justice not only in the
courts of law but also in the way we live
our lives before the watching world.
Defending the accused
I am often asked how it is just for a Christian
to defend someone who is guilty of a crime.
The question belies a misunderstanding of
the role of a criminal lawyer.
In the first place, everyone is presumed
innocent until proven guilty. It is not for
the defence counsel to act as a judge. That
is the job of the courts. It is the job of the
prosecutor to prove his crime to the court.
The defence lawyer, as David Marshall
often told his students, is to fight for his
client’s best interest, no matter how odious
he is, because justice demands that he is
given his day in court and gets the benefit
of the best counsel available to speak on his
behalf.
As a lawyer, I am an officer of the
court and it is my job to take my client’s
instruction to defend him to the best of
my ability. If he tells me that he did the
criminal act, it will be my duty to advise
him to plead guilty and my duty will be to
mitigate for him.
Some believe that lawyers defend
criminals at all cost, including lying to
court. On the contrary, I am duty-bound
as an officer of the court to assist the court
in arriving at the truth. The challenge is
to do your utmost for your client and for
the court in my dual capacity as defence
counsel and officer of the court at the
same time.
To be a Christian lawyer is truly to
“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to
God what is God’s” (Matt. 22:21).
Dr William Wan, a retired lawyer and pastor, is
a pioneer member of the Asian Beacon Editorial
Board (in the late 1960s). He is currently the
General Secretary of the Singapore Kindness
Movement and Chairman of Prison Fellowship
Singapore. A grand-dad of three teenagers, he
is an ambassador for active aging and is on the
board of several non-profit organisations. He is
a published author and speaks and preaches
regularly.
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