Legal Eagle Alert!
Alex Roth in the San Diego Union-Tribune weighs in with Defense attorneys draw public's ire:

People in San Diego and around the country reacted with outrage yesterday to the notion that a defense lawyer who knows his client committed a horrible crime could tell a jury the client couldn't be guilty.

Their anger was incited by a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune, quoting unnamed sources, that David Westerfield's lawyers offered early in the case to have their client tell police where to find the body of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam if prosecutors would not seek the death penalty.

"David Westerfield's defense attorney knew he was guilty ... but he tried to mislead the jury anyway!" announced the Web site of "The O'Reilly Factor," the Fox News Channel national talk show. "Can anyone defend this kind of behavior?"

I guess I'm jaded. I thought all defense lawyers did that.

The newspaper's sources said prosecutors were on the verge of accepting the offer of Westerfield's defense team – a life-without-parole sentence in exchange for information about where to find the body – when volunteers discovered Danielle's remains off Dehesa Road east of El Cajon on Feb. 27.

Prosecutors no longer had any incentive to make a deal and the potential plea bargain collapsed, the sources said. Such negotiations cannot be used as evidence in a trial.

Legal experts said Westerfield's defense team was acting ethically on behalf of their client in an attempt to spare him the death penalty a jury eventually recommended.

...

There are ethical limits to what a criminal defense lawyer can do on behalf of a client. California State Bar guidelines forbid lawyers from knowingly letting a client lie on the witness stand.

If the client insists on testifying anyway, the defense lawyer has an obligation to tell the judge in private that the client will be testifying over the objection of his counsel, according to San Diego defense attorney Gerald Blank.

I'm sure that happens a whole lot.

But preventing a client from lying on the witness stand is entirely different from telling a jury the client is not guilty of the crime, Blank said.

In the opinion of Blank and other defense attorneys, asserting that the client is not guilty is different from asserting innocence.

"Innocent" means the client didn't do it. "Not guilty" means the state doesn't have the evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, Blank said. Jurors return guilty or not-guilty verdicts. In rare cases a judge will make a finding that a defendant is innocent.

Interesting distinction. Where's Bubba to tell us what the meaning of "is" is?