Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Relax. There are many, many jobs in a D.A.'s office that will never put you in that position. You'd have to become a superstar in the office to ever get to that position where you could handle death cases, and all you have to do is decline a promotion to the homicide trial squad. Lot's else to do. Lobby for Domestic violence squad, drug court, fraud, grand jury, misdemeanor and felony trials, other than murder one. Should not be a problem.

But on the serious side, I will tell you something. After 35 years of law practice, I can tell you that, as a lawyer, you don't have to prosecute or defend a death case to be responsible for a person's life. You will be in that position repeatedly as an attorney. People kill themselves when they lose a case. They die of stress from litigation pending too long. They desperately need medical care and will have no place to go except you to make it happen. I once defended a man on criminal gun charges and got him off. He asked me to petition to get his guns returned, so I did. Two weeks later his brother called me and told me he used his gun to kill himself.

So if you cannot handle being responsible for anyone's life, you might want to consider being a shoe repair person. The worst you could do then is cause bunions.

Decisions about whether to seek the death penalty in a given case are usually made by the District Attorney or United States Attorney herself, rather than by the deputy who is trying the case. You would almost certainly never have the authority to make this decision yourself unless and until you are appointed to the top job in the office.

Perhaps more to the point, the decision about whether to seek the death penalty is usually made at a very early stage in the case. The decision about which prosecutor will try the case may not even have been made yet. Unless you are literally the only attorney available to try the case, it is unlikely that you would be forced to seek the death penalty if you don't want to. And if you are already assigned to the case when your superiors decide to seek the death penalty, they would almost surely reassign the case to another prosecutor if you asked them to.