But (based on my Law-and-Order understanding of the law), isn't it the accused who enters the plea, not the lawyer? Can the lawyer override the client's plea if he or she believes it to be untrue?
I certainly hope not!
So why did they imply that she was somehow responsible for the plea, even when they state that she was legally obliged to defend him to the best of her abilities?
They did not imply that. They made an error with one word, which doesn't particularly affect the meaning of the sentence, which I'll quote here:
Similarly ridiculous is Snopes’ claim that Hillary “did not assert that the complainant ‘made up the rape story.'” She pleaded that her client was not guilty, meaning that she argued in court that he didn’t rape the victim. Hillary claimed that her client was not guilty of rape while the victim was saying he raped her.
The bolded word is, indeed, an error in writing, as it should have read something like, "she entered the plea of not guilty, and then proceeded to argue that he didn't rape the victim." So you got them there, but this is in the context of Snopes' claim under
What's False that "she did not assert that the complainant “made up the rape story[.]”" Whether Clinton entered the plea or pleaded that the rape didn't happen is immaterial to this point. She argued that the victim was making it up, which is all the article was saying. The fact that she basically
had to argue this is, in a sense, besides the point. Remember, the "claim" Snopes was analyzing was only this: "Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case." This statement, in and of itself, is clearly true, even thought Snopes called it "mostly false", which I why I tend to side with the logic of Ethics Alarms. Snopes did bring up good points regarding not "freeing" the defendent, and the technically true (but in-context false) point that Clinton didn't verbatim claim her client was guilty, but while clearing up the various aspects of the case is always good, these are to an extent sidetracks from the point Snopes claimed to be addressing, and about which it seems to have strayed in order to justify calling it "mostly false." I find it really hard to read their opinion as anything other than editorial bias. That's ok, as long as they own up to presenting facts and then taking sides. That means they're not objective, which isn't the same as saying not of value.