In any country, public defense has long been known for its underpaid and overworked lawyers who rarely have the time to go over a case before being appointed to another one. Although these public defenders are a necessity for those that cannot afford a private lawyer, the quality of their work is significantly lower than that of a hired lawyer. In addition to having no incentive to work towards defending an accused criminal, almost all public defenders have a tight budget that often prevents them from requesting for a proper forensic investigation, such as a DNA analysis from the crime lab. This has a serious impact on cases involving murder, particularly for the person charged with the felony who is on trial for capital punishment like the death sentence or life imprisonment.

In Algeria, court-appointed public defenders are mandatory if the defendant had no lawyer by his first trial. For a country financially worse off than most of the world, its public defenders most likely do not get sufficient budget to adequately execute their jobs. Moreover, their meager salary and long hours of laborious work have shown to contribute to a disorderly manner in presenting their cases. These factors may explain why, in the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, Meursault’s lawyer, a character who performed poorly in his job defending the absurdist hero, could not reach the standard set by the prosecutor. 

In brief, the protagonist in the novel was arrested on the charge of second degree murder of an Arab who was found to be shot five times at an Algerian beach. Moments before the crime was committed, the Arab and his friend had been involved in a fistfight with Meursault and his “buddy” Raymond, who was the main reason behind the conflict. The Arab had been following Raymond around ever since he discovered that Raymond had physically abused his sister. Although the encounter at the beach was brief, Raymond and Meursault returned later to them and attempted to make a scene. However, Meursault prevented Raymond from shooting the Arab and eventually ended up with the gun in his possession. The next thing we knew, he was back alone at the same place and had fired at the Arab.

The case against Meursault was built predominantly upon the way he reacted to his mother’s death. The prosecutor’s goal was to prove to the jury that Meursault’s indifference towards his mother meant he was “a monster”, one who did not care for the man he killed and would kill anyone again without remorse. Once the prosecutor started to call Meursault’s character into question however, the entire trial became focused on this one aspect. The primary purpose of the trial shifted from judging the crime to judging the person and the severity of the punishment that followed became based on Meursault’s inhumanity instead of the degree of the crime he committed. Even Meursault’s lawyer made references towards his soul and endeavored to convince everyone that he was a good man. This caused the defense to lose its ground since it became dependent on rebuking the prosecutor. As a result, the judge did not understand what Meursault’s side of the argument was. Until Meursault stated, “I never intended to kill the Arab,” the judge “hadn’t quite grasped the nature of [Meursault’s] defense”.

If I were Meursault’s lawyer, I would have called out the prosecutor for being irrelevant to the topic at hand. There was no need for the trial to be focused on his character and it alone. I would have steered the process away from the funeral and more into evidence-based assumptions on why he committed such a crime. I could clearly see that even just reviewing the specific moments before the murder in chronological order could prove that Meursault might have acted in self-defense. Regarding the Arab, “as soon as he saw [Meursault], he sat up a little and put his hand in his pocket. Naturally, [Meursault] gripped Raymond’s gun inside [his] jacket”.

Meursault’s first instinct was to reach for something to defend himself against anything that might have the potential of harming him, as anyone of us would have had in his situation. Notice that he was not the one who drew the gun first: “without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to [Meursault] in the sun”. Anyone would have been startled at this point, and with the “sweat in [his] eyebrows [covering his] eyelids with a warm, thick film”, he might have been alarmed of an attack which could have been made towards him while he was unable to see. Self-defense might be a stretch given his absurdist stance, but he still harbored a human body. If instinct was the reason he pulled that trigger, sentencing him to a death penalty would be excessive and unjust.

Another subtle but powerful approach would be to make everyone understand that there was a difference between being an absurdist and “a monster”, and that Meursault was the former. As a person who did not believe in having a meaning in doing anything, it would have been hard for him to have premeditated the crime. He said, “I was a little surprised. As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was over, and I’d gone there without even thinking about it”. He hadn’t given a single thought to what had transpired between the Arabs and Raymond immediately after it had happened; to him, it was the same as if they had strolled along the beach drinking champagne.

The prosecutor had stated that Meursault was “intelligent” but was also one who “didn’t have a soul and that not one of the moral principles that govern men’s hearts were within his reach”. This attribute could be used to describe a psychopath, except that if Meursault was truly one, he would have pretended to express remorse in front of everyone to get away with murder instead of being truthful to his own self in how he is. Like an absurdist, he stayed true to himself because he believed there was nothing wrong with murdering a man.
Meursault’s lawyer may have been an underpaid, overworked public defendant, but he did manage to deliver some good points.

The only issue was that he was not as talented as the prosecutor, assuming he didn’t prepare enough for this case. On the other hand, the prosecutor constructed a case out of Meursault’s persona without providing any solid evidence on whether the felony was a crime of passion or an intentional one. Although it is hard to defend a murderer, in the case of self-defense or an absurdist, I believe life imprisonment for Meursault would have been sufficient enough to punish his act of wrongdoing.