There&#x27;s a subtler point: <i>even if they are criminals</i>, it&#x27;s still valid to represent criminals to make sure that justice is served. You want criminals punished for the crimes they did commit, not the ones they didn&#x27;t. You want sentencing to be fair, not vindictive. You want conspirators and other partners to be identified and to be punished too; you don&#x27;t want the one unrepresented person to be coerced by everyone else&#x27;s lawyers into taking all the blame. You want loopholes, as long as they exist, to be as available to the poor as to the rich.<p>I think I&#x27;m actually more worried about the loss of this than the loss of innocence-until-proven-guilty. That&#x27;s the sort of stuff that gets people thinking, if you don&#x27;t want to be extrajudicially killed on the streets, don&#x27;t sell untaxed goods if you have asthma.