Today’s post is was written by Thomas Hutto ,a third year law student at the Nashville School of Law . Thomas and I met when he started following the www.Nashvillecriminallawreport.com . This is his first guest post and I hope you enjoy it . He has a couple of more that will be appearing .

What happens when I say I’m thinking about criminal law?

"Really? But, you’d have to defend criminals!" That’s the first thing I usually hear.

"How could you defend someone accused of X?" is a close second.

I’m not so young and naïve as to believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. I am idealistic enough to think that we must force the government to prove them guilty.

Some people commit crimes, some people are accused of a crime. These two groups overlap. There are police officers and prosecutors who try to make the crime fit the facts and then make those facts fit the accused. They have their jobs, I’ll have mine. Everyone has constitutional rights. The state should not violate them, but they do. If the government is willing to violate and suppress the rights of people accused of a crime, they are more than willing to violate yours. In defending the rights of the accused, criminal lawyers defend you too.

Thomas is a third year law student at the Nashville School of Law.