Defense attorneys are supposed to fight for their clients rights in an impartial way. They may have access to the evidence, but they did not personally see the crime happen.

A lot of this was built around a world prior to surveillance video being everywhere all the time giving a somewhat clearer picture into events, so for a lot of like public defense attorneys only fight as much as they can. Like if there’s clearly video proving it happened (not through video analysis alone but in combination with eyewitness accounts) , the defense lawyer can do things like argue for a plea deal but that’s about it. With enough evidence, they have to be honest with their client about how realistic their chances are.

Some people who reject reality do things like say their public defense lawyer is shafting them when the lawyer actually can’t help them because of the wealth of evidence, and then they follow it up with further stupid shit like trying to represent themselves in court.

As for people like Johnny Cochran, who represented OJ Simpson. They’re the same as anyone else for whom there is no moral and ethical depth they won’t plumb just so they can get paid a shitload of money. That’s no different than like Trump’s pool guy taking a sweetheart contract to do a job incredibly wrong. It’s just people who are willing to take the money and fuck the consequences because to them money trumps ethics and morals. So yeah they suck shit, but so does everyone like that, not just defense lawyers.