Will Hayden's mug shot

There’s a code of ethics when it comes to lawyers. As unbelievable as that statement sounds, there are some things that they aren’t willing to do. One shining example is lying in court or contributing to the commission of a fraud, which is exactly what a lawyer would be doing if, in the defense of their client, they presented false evidence or made false statements. This week it seems that Will Hayden, former star of the gun-related TV show Sons of Guns and (twice arrested) accused child rapist may have learned that lesson as his legal team abandoned him before his trial could even begin . . .

Following his arrest, Will Hayden denied any wrongdoing and professed his innocence. He hired a “dream team” trio of lawyers to defend him against the multiple rape allegations being levied against him – some by his own children – and for a while it seemed things just might work out in Will’s favor.

Then his daughter broke ranks and stopped parroting the party line. The show was cancelled and things went completely off the rails. Now Hayden has been abandoned by his lawyers as they can no longer come up with a defense that will both keep him out of jail and them in the good graces of the ethics board. From nola.com:

Holthaus said the trio stopped working Hayden’s case because “continued representation was unsupportable.” He would not elaborate on the meaning of “unsupportable.” He did say a “broad spectrum” of conditions under which they took Hayden on as a client “didn’t pan out.” Those conditions, he said, are confidential.

Erwin on Thursday appointed Susan Hebert from the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Defender’s Office to take Hayden’s case.

That’s not good for Hayden’s cause. The punishment for the crimes he’s accused of is life in prison — definitely something you don’t want to rely on an already overworked public defender’s office to handle for you.

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100 COMMENTS

      • I can’t comment on the sexual predation but just from what I saw on the show, he’s at least a great big bag of douche.

        • Oh great, now you’ve gone and set off douche bags. Not even through the first handful of comments and we’ve outraged the shit bag and douche bag communities. This is a PR nightmare. Oh, and a (once was) gun guy turned out to be a serial child rapist.

  2. The most likely reason is failing to pay their fees. This would also be the reason why he qualified for a Public Defender. Yes, qualified. You have to be poor to get one.

    But hey, never, never, never pass up the chance to slam the lawyers, even if you have to invent a reason!

    • ‘You have to be poor to get one.’

      So if you pay for your own defense and you’re acquitted does the state owe you for your legal fees when they falsely charged you with a crime? I could see unscrupulous DAs charging people they don’t like with crimes just to force them to run up legal fees. Considering for example the misconduct up in Wisconsin with the ‘John Doe investigations’ that’s probably happened more than you might think. Of course it should be the DA not the taxpayers that foot the bill, but then it would be great if cars ran on unicorn farts too.

      • “So if you pay for your own defense and you’re acquitted does the state owe you for your legal fees when they falsely charged you with a crime?”

        No. Ask George Zimmerman.

        “I could see unscrupulous DAs charging people they don’t like with crimes just to force them to run up legal fees.”

        It has happened.

      • “I could see unscrupulous DAs charging people they don’t like with crimes just to force them to run up legal fees.”

        Golly, think that’s ever happened?

        Do you really believe that’s not SOP?

      • What’s really common is for the da to overcharge a case- take a negligent homicide case and charge it as first degree murder, for example. It makes it more likely that the jury will convict on the lesser charge as a compromise than if they only brought the lesser charge. It’s dirty pool.

  3. Like I have said before, if guilty castrate him, without any Novocain or pain relief, while he is awake. If not let him go. Just by being accused guilty or not is life is over.

    • I personally think child molestors (real child molesters – not statutory “rapists” that our system puts in jail because sex is icky and we don’t want to think about sexually active teens) should be castrated (or chemically supressed for women), made to work for 5 years hard labor, and then set free.

      That way they aren’t a drain on tax dollars, they contribute something to society with their labor, they still have a chance to contribute as a citizen, and most importantly, they never relapse.

      The recidivism rate for child molesters is ridiculously high because in most cases, childen are what they are attracted to. There are plenty of pedos who don’t act on it – just check reddit. However, someone who has actually hurt a child has proven they don’t have the impulse control or self discipline to deal with their abnormal attractions.

      Plus, since the topic is taboo, our culture has no way for these people to get help at all. None. And it’s so frowned upon that even if there were, not many people would probably take it. I think the only logical solution since as a society we are just sitting around, waiting for a pedo to snap and kids to be molested is to take a molester’s libido after it happens so it can’t happen again.

      • Is there a doc in house?
        I’m pretty sure that castrating a post-teen does not turns off the pedophilia drive. Perhaps docs can practice gender-change surgery on them.

        You are right about prisons. If elected President I would immediately pardon all non-violent drug offenders.

        • I’d vote for you – but I think everyone who has money in our for-profit prisons would probably outvote me.

        • @Doug: I think you are correct about castration not turning off the root causes and motives of a sex offender. What I have read on the subject backs up what you stated. Not sure what to do with these folks ? Maybe keep them in prison or work release with a bunch of others just like themselves. Maybe they can offend each other or something like that ? Cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden by the Bill of Rights if I remember correctly. So that is out. Letting them back out into society, in many cases, does not seem to work either. Chemical castration is probably also cruel and probably worse than prison or a death sentence for many of these folks. Guessing that most of them were probably abused as a child and that may be the root cause of their problems. But, I don’t think anyone has figured out a way to get rid of their obsessions once they start offending.

        • If I remember right there is a country in Europe that allows offenders to choose the option between jail or being castrated, and supposedly those that pick castration have like a 90% success rate of never committing such a crime again. While I believe castration does not turn off the pedophilia drive, it reduces the sexual desire of said offenders enough that they can’t be bothered to really act on it.

          Admittedly this is something I had read many years ago, so I could be remembering this completely wrong, and maybe it was simply a hypothetical.

        • Castration won’t make pedophiles stop liking children, but it will seriously lower their drive to act on it. Never underestimate the power of hormones.

          Example: 80 year old men still notice women and check out asses, but very few of them are out trying to get laid.

        • @galtha58
          “But, I don’t think anyone has figured out a way to get rid of their obsessions once they start offending.”

          They should be killed, but it is wrong to judge somebody based on their sexual preferences, according to the supreme court.

          The worst case of suicide ever, is what I would have to report to the police if a chomo touched any innocent children under my protection.

        • @galtha58
          “But, I don’t think anyone has figured out a way to get rid of their obsessions once they start offending.”

          That is an easy solution. Service men and women who go into combat out of duty to country and love for the Constitution know the answer, and Contractors that get paid really good money deliver that answer to evil men.

          The answer is evil people need killing.

  4. Oh yeah, lying in court is crossing over the line for an attorney. Somebody tell that to Hildebeest, Race Horse Haynes (OJ), and on and on and on.

  5. I think you’re misreading the situation. Lawyers will defend their client no matter if they know they’re guilty and they’re supposed to.

    This was clearly just Will running out of money and not able to pay them, hence the move to a public defender instead of another private attorney.

    • The right to an attorney and the obligation of defense lawyers to defend somebody has nothing to do with whether or not the defendant is guilty. The legal system is so complex and pretty much any case could go so many different directions that no ordinary person could understand their rights or how best to defend themselves if innocent or at least mitigate the consequences if they actually did do it. That’s why defense attorneys will defend guilty people and go home with a clear conscience.

  6. “One shining example is lying in court or contributing to the commission of a fraud, which is exactly what a lawyer would be doing if, in the defense of their client, they presented false evidence or made false statements.”

    Brah, prosecutors do that all the time.

    • “Brah, prosecutors do that all the time.”

      Prosecutors are state sanctioned so the law does not apply to them, only to us subjects.

  7. Willy, Willy, what have you done to yourself. You better figure out some way to sneak in a miniature lath, and milling machine into prison, so you can make yourself some escape stuff.

  9. There’s a code of ethics when it comes to lawyers..there are some things that they aren’t willing to do. One shining example is lying in court

    LOL! Not only have I seen attorneys lie in court, I have sworn pleadings in writing of them doing so! Don’t think the .gov attorneys (and FBI) lie in court? Look up the Wen Ho Lee case.

    • Beat me to it Danny.
      ALL litigating attorneys lie in court. They’re free to utter all the lies they want, as long as they aren’t testifying under oath.

      But willingly allowing perjured testimony, or knowingly introducing false evidence, or illegally suppressing evidence, that’s fraud.

      I would say most full time Prosecutors commit fraud upon the court as a fairly regular (once a month or more) practice.

      And I would make that EVERY United States Attorney who has a reasonable expectation of keeping his job. If an honest lawyer stumbled into that hornet’s nest, they’d fire him faster than the LAPD fired Christopher Dorner.

      • ALL litigating attorneys lie in court.

        Bullshit. I lost one case in 30 years and never lied in court. Bad lawyers lie in court. Good lawyers don’t have to — and won’t.

        • “Bullshit. I lost one case in 30 years and never lied in court.”

          You were in corporate law, were you not?

          Curious also, have you declined to accept a case after you heard the particulars in the matter?

        • Most of my defense work was corporate, commercial or environmental, but not all of it. I avoided criminal law — I had partners who excelled at criminal — except for white collar. White color has a much better class of defendant. 🙂 And yes, I turned down cases for any number of reasons. For example, if I thought that I couldn’t help someone, I would not take his money.

        • Bad lawyers lie in court. Good lawyers don’t have to — and won’t.

          A Texas prosecutor has been stripped of his law license after a panel of the State Bar determined he withheld evidence and used false testimony to win a capital murder conviction against Anthony Graves.

          http://www.cbsnews.com/news/charles-sebasta-prosecutor-of-wrongfully-convicted-man-anthony-graves-loses-law-license/

          Just look at the Zimmerman trial, which I watched in its entirety. The prosecution lied almost a dozen times that I counted. The entire legal system is corrupt. Gross violations of protocol and police procedure occurred when the Sanford city officials and Florida State Attorney Angela Corey became involved.

          The Sanford Chief of Police Bill Lee was fired because he didn’t file charges when his investigation determined that George Zimmerman acted in self-defense, although the captain that replaced him and was tasked with the Zimmerman investigation came to the exact same conclusion.

          Ben Kruidbos, director of Information Services for Angela Corey’s prosecutor’s office, was fired for providing discovery materials to the defense as required by law. State Prosecutor Angela Corey was withholding evidence (equivalent to lying), and she fired him.

          The lead investigator, Detective Chris Serino, whose testimony backed up George Zimmerman and not Trayvon Martin, was busted back to police uniform rank.

        • Mike Nifong was disbarred for lying–dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation–and was accused of a “systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion prejudicial to the administration of justice” when he withheld evidence in the Duke Lacrosse Case.

          There are others.

        • So Ralph, you never claimed in a closing argument that a witness said something he didn’t, or in an opening argument that the evidence would show something that didn’t happen?

          Anyway, since you spent more time in courtrooms than I have, what percentage of attorneys do you think have tried to BS their way through a trial when the facts are against their client, like the USA who told SCOTUS in the Miller case that sawed off shotguns had no militia purpose?
          It seems like every one I’ve watched in action, not that there were very many.

          • the USA who told SCOTUS in the Miller case that sawed off shotguns had no militia purpose?

            Yep, the US attorneys lied through their teeth saying that short shotguns had never been used by our military thus weren’t covered by the Second Amendment.

            I don’t doubt that government attorneys lie continually. That’s a given. Now what about family law attorneys? LOL

            • uuuuhhhhmmmm, is there like, you know, like, uuuhhhmmm different breeds with different characteristics?

        • @Danny Griffin, that’s what I said. Good lawyers don’t lie in court because they don’t have to and don’t want to. Bad lawyers — like Mike Nifong and Angela Corey — lie like a rug.

        • @FedUp, my job was to present the truth in its best light, not to make things up. As for summation, most of my cases were bench trials (judge only, like most cases), due to the subject matter. Judges don’t like to be bullshitted. In fact, they hate it. And juries want honesty. They are much more tuned-in than you might think.

          I also served on two juries, so I have a little bit of an advantage over lawyers who didn’t. The individual jurors may have a double-digit IQ, but collectively they can usually smell bullshit.

  11. Among the “broad spectrum” of conditions that Hayden breached was fresh Subway sandwiches delivered every day by his buddy Jared.

    • “Among the “broad spectrum” of conditions that Hayden breached was fresh Subway sandwiches delivered every day by his buddy Jared.”

      ‘Getting breached’ is a nice way of saying what Hayden has in store for him in the general population of that prison…

      *snicker*

  12. if you will not explain yourself (lawyers….), then i, and everyone else, gets to explain things. based on what is referenced in the article, the only thing these lawyers seem incapable of is representing someone they think is guilty and losing the case would damage the reputation of the lawyers. these guys certify that all the lawyer jokes are actually true stories.

    • On the other hand…as Gerry Spence has said, “Everyone is entitled to a defense, but everyone is not entitled to have me as an attorney.” Can’t pay? You get a public defender.

      • lack of funds for defense is one explanation. fear of losing and then losing future billings is another. i guess either way it is about the money.

        it is always about the money.

        when you have lawyers and the legal system involved, it is never about justice…or even the law. it is about money.

        • It’s not as simple as that. An attorney can’t just quit without cause. A judge has to release him (them). Maybe Dirk or another attorney can chime in on allowable causes. Is finding out that your client lied to you one? I’d bet that showing your client would have no way of paying a million dollars in legal fees would be one, too.

          • see? we get to make-up all these explanations. who knows?

            but i suspect the fear of losing with a loser,and maybe seeing future billings from other potential clients evaporate along with the reputations of attorneys who represented such a loser pretty much wrap-it up.

            in the end, it is always about the money.

            btw – these attorneys aren’t too bright anyway….taking a high profile client without financial due diligence BEFORE agreeing to represent.

  13. Here’s the conditions: Money. He’s broke and has no way of making any money. Dream teams cost money. Now Subway pitch man Jared, he’s worth about 15 M He’s going to do time and get out. Will is going to rot in prison after being slam dunked.

  14. He would not elaborate on the meaning of “unsupportable.”

    Allow me to elaborate. The idea of Hayden being able to pay them for every billable hour after they took it to trial became unsupportable.

  15. Mixed emotions on this. Truly, a serial pedophile is beneath contempt. But once you begin to abandon the process you get people like h clinton.

  16. I think the part that didn’t pan out was when Will ran out of money and his pricey lawyers abandoned ship.

  18. Has nothing to do with money. If it was money, and they were this far into the case, the judge wouldn’t let them out.

    Generally, when this happens, it means that the client wants to defend using evidence that the lawyers absolutely know is untrue. If they can’t talk him out of it, they quietly go to the judge and explain that they cannot continue with the representation.

    Since the lawyers cannot turn around and publicly trash their client’s chances by spilling private, privileged information (whatever he tells them is privileged), they cannot come out and announce “he’s gonna lie.”

    This is how they comply with their personal and professional ethics in a tough situation.

    FWIW, you will find that just about the same percentage of lawyers are lying scum as are the total population. If 4% of people are lying scum, about 4% of lawyers are, too.

    In my 20+ years, I’ve tried crim cases and civil cases. I’ve represented corporations and pedophiles and houses and airplanes. (Think “civil asset forfeiture.”) Frankly, I find more lying scum amongst anonymous internet commenters than amongst lawyers.

    • your last statement was what i have come to expect (and rarely disappointed) from lawyers. simple trash with law degrees.

      • Come on George, I think that’s the one good thing you can safely say about the legal profession, that they’re on average more truthful than anonymous posters of internet comments.

        Just think of all the BS you see when you scroll down to the comments in most internet sites.

        • really? upon what basis would we conclude that?

          they are like auto mechanics; never turn your back.

          the idea that a client insists on somehow “using lies as facts”, and that offends an attorney?

          as so many have noted, the law is about money, the legal system is about money. when law and justice (two often mutually exclusive propositions) are relegated to tactics in pursuit of money, what have we? gerry spence might feel righteous that not everyone deserves his service BECAUSE THEY CAN’T AFFORD HIM, but he screams-out why lawyers should be inherently subject to RICCO investigations.

          we need lawyers, but their fiduciary responsibility (sometimes called ‘ethics’) is to themselves. just like auto mechanics, we need lawyers to fix things. but would you want your daughter to marry one?

        • thank you; made my point.

          given the number of bad cops to “good” cops, given the number of jailbirds who gain their law degree, it seems kinda tough to not conclude that the “good” lawyers are far fewer than the bad lawyers. not cop is to be trusted. no jailbird is to be trusted. now lawyer is to be trusted. we gotta sometimes have cops and lawyers. but they are hired hands, just like a lawn service. i wouldn’t trust my lawn service, which is why i do a follow-up inspection every time.

          lawyer jokes are just concise truths told to the public.

        • @george from fort worth, you sound like your ex-wife’s lawyer took you to the cleaners. Too bad, so sad.

          • nah, you are over-thinking this.

            my insight into the fantasy world of the law comes from studying 230yrs of lawyers as a ruling class (Congress and the Presidency). there. ’nuff said. tell me again how we should esteem lawyers.

          • @george from fort worth, you sound like your ex-wife’s lawyer took you to the cleaners. Too bad, so sad.

            Ralph, I’m sorry to read what you wrote here. It sounds like you are gloating or laughing at “george from fort worth” because his ex-wife’s lawyer took him to the cleaners. I am an engineer and I can assure you that I would not be happy if a fellow engineer screwed someone or did shoddy work on his behalf.

        • agreed. but lawyers (even doctors) are mechanics. lotsa education and maybe even experience. but mechanics just the same. i don’t trust my mechanic (because their fiduciary interest is themselves) to “do right by me”, so i go over every item on the bill and demand return of replaced parts/items (which are probably from some other job, anyway). same with doctors; same with lawyers.

          btw, i don’t trust cops either, but i know sometimes they are needed (and i believe, but do not expect, them to display proper professionalism). however, i think they should be subject to video monitoring at all times. why? because i don’t trust them even when i need them.

          and to repeat myself (which i love to do), Congress has been almost 100% lawyers for how long? how’s that working out for ya?

    • the same percentage of lawyers are lying scum as are the total population.

      That’s supposed to be some sterling defense? The general population doesn’t seek jobs where dishonesty has such grave consequences, where one single lie can ruin your own career or someone else’s life. They don’t swear to tell the truth and hold the fate of another in his or her hands. Attorneys do. Yet some lie with impunity and couldn’t care less about ruining someone else financially or convicting them falsely, even if it means putting them in prison for years.

      There’s supposed to be a “higher standard,” just as with police. Yet apparently there isn’t. Although I trust attorneys way more than police.

        • you were good until that last statement.

          LOL. These comments keep degrading and digressing into garbage talk. It’s like watching a soap opera here.

      • This “higher standard” is the problem. There’s no such thing. People are people. Even mechanics and lawyers. Set higher standards for human behavior in any realm and prepare for disappointment.

  19. Imagine if Will Hayden and Jared Fogle end up being cellmates?

    Will: What are you in for?

    Jared: Sex with underage girls.

    Will: ME TOO! I had sex with my daughter.

    Jared: You’re one sick fuck.

  20. @bobby b: “Frankly, I find more lying scum amongst anonymous internet commenters than amongst lawyers.”
    Are you talking about Willy again ? Or whatever alias he is using today?

  21. Funny thing about lawyers is that everyone hates them except when they really need one. And everyone makes jokes about them but thinks their own lawyer is great. Well, most rational people do that IMO. There are always the outliers in any group or profession that give the rest a bad rep. I used to own and run an auto repair business. Once in a while I would hear that “all the other shops are ripoffs so that is why I came to you”. Fact is that very few shops rip off anyone and the people that said this were politely told “Sorry but we are booked up for weeks. You better try someone else.” A good customer is worth their weight in gold. A bad customer I would trade for a bad of horseshit and feel lucky to get rid of them. We probably had less than 1% of the people that walked in the door that I would not work with. But that 1% could cause major headaches and money if they got past the front end and we actually did work for them. So we tried to spot them early on to avoid the pain and frustration. Betting this sounds familiar to many business owners and probably to quite a few lawyers as well. As most lawyers are running a business in one way or another.

  22. As for Will Hayden…….GOOD LUCK ON SODOMY ISLAND. KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON THAT O-RING hahahaha.

  23. If he’s found guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, kill him.

    Life in prison is a huge drain on our tax dollars. If you can’t trust him out in the world, then why let him live?

    I support killing all child molesters (like someone said, true molesters not statutory rape cases that were otherwise consensual)

    • You support making a capital punishment for a non capital crime? How long till you’re sick of jaywalkers and advocate killing them because they cause traffic jams. How about ditching the hyperbole and using your keyboard commando skills to suggest some actually useful and workable system of handling for pedos.

  24. His love life is going too change for sure, I guessing some hard time coming his way for a como that’s about all he can expect

  26. “One shining example is lying in court or contributing to the commission of a fraud, which is exactly what a lawyer would be doing if, in the defense of their client, they presented false evidence or made false statements.”

    Seriously? ROTFLMAO!

    Nick, let me clue you in; “continued representation was unsupportable”; in lawyerspeak that means Will Hayden’s sorry ass is broke and can’t afford to pay his “dream team” legal bill; it doesn’t have $#it to do with noble adherence to a code of ethics by the defense attorneys.

    As long as they are getting paid (supported), successful defense attorneys will do whatever it takes to defend their clients and the reason they become successful is because they’re smart enough to know precisely how to walk that fine line where presenting false evidence and making false statements is completely legitimate within the broad confines of an adversarial defense afforded in our justice system by the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

    Nick, if you ever find yourself in the unfortunate predicament of hiring a defense attorney, unless you’re willing to accept prison time as a viable option, don’t allow your naïveté and gullibility to limit your selection of counsel to a lawyer who begins with a Code of Ethics to plan a strategy on how best to keep Nick’s ass out of the penitentiary, those are the attorneys that the prosecutor and police just love because their clients either plead out or are usually found guilty when the case goes to trial.

    • aaaayyyyyyy MEN !

      would rather have a mafia lawyer defending me than an “ethical” lawyer (i know, oxymoron).

  27. Trying hard to feel some sympathy for the client abandoned by lawyers…nah, nope, none, not sorry.

    As to the lawyers, I am with Shakespeare on that.

  28. They are removing themselves from this case because Hayden is running out of money.
    Ethics and morality has NOTHING to do with it because they are lawyers….they have neither ethics OR morality. ALL lawyers are perfectly willing to lie, deceive or engage in
    fraudulent behavior if it they stand to profit from it. The ONLY question they ask when
    engaging in such activity is ‘will I get caught’.

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