To many, especially my colleagues at the criminal defense bar, this will all sound like heresy. Maybe it is—still, probably worth a discussion.

After all, the title of this column might suggest that I'm advocating a position that anyone who has ever defended a person in the public eye will (maybe, rightly) see as anathema. It's tough enough to defend any case against the awesome power of the government seeking to convict. But then, to also face a prosecutor whose arsenal includes a press release (often distributed via tweet, among other fora) and/or that stinging press conference. You know, those conferences ostensibly designed to "inform" the public, but equipped, maybe intended, to create irreversible public sentiment against the accused.

Whatever the prosecutor intends, the press conference or even press release has the inordinate capacity to influence public opinion against the accused, even though the final line of every prosecutor's release, almost as an afterthought, says that an indictment is not proof of guilt. And while that last sentence is desirable and ethically required, does anyone really pay it any attention? Or more to the point, believe it? All this said, where do we go from here?