Fighting the system isn't even on the radar.

The example using the woman in the article is based on the hypothetical that the woman had the information that the reader of the article now has. I was using her case as an example of how the situation could have turned out differently if she had that information at the time.

Fighting the system to sue the attorney happens only IF (an unlikely IF) she had asked the attorney to get a lab test done and he refused to request it. If he had requested a lab test done on her behalf (which is a much more likely outcome), she would have gotten out of jail without a felony record and been able to resume her career as a property manager. Then she wouldn't have to be taking those minimum wage jobs to afford food and shelter.

Only IF he had done the wrong thing would she have the potential of seeking redress. She could choose to do this or not in the hypothetical situation that the attorney did the wrong thing.

IF that had happened, it goes along with the scenario that she would have been exonerated and would no longer have a felony on her record. At that point, she could seek a better job, possibly back as a property manager before looking for an attorney.

IF that had happened, your painting of the picture of how difficult finding an attorney would be is pure speculation. I could speculate in the opposite direction. She might have known attorneys from her career as a property manager. Even if she didn't, the first attorney she called might have agreed to take her case pro bono or on a contingency.

The moral of this story is not that this woman should have done something different when faced with this conviction it's that she never should have been charged in the first place.

Yes. In a perfect world, there would be no places in the system where injustices would ever occur. That perfect world doesn't exist.

I'm not blaming this woman for what she should have done. She had no reason to know that the roadside test was not admissible as evidence. I was using her case as an example for what could have gone differently had she been given the information the reader now has.

I added the parenthetical part about my moral being tongue in cheek in part because her story is a caution to the reader of the article that they might have a different outcome with the knowledge they gained by reading the article.. They can ask for a lab test. She didn't know that one was available.

This article was written not to make people think of all the things she could have done differently but to make people realize the system needs to change.

Since the system hasn't been changed yet (the article doesn't say it has), one takeaway from the article could be that if the reader of the article is ever faced with the situation, they can request a lab test to be done. They might be able to avoid the situation this woman was faced with.

If the article was written with the intention of calling people to arms to change the system, the author didn't suggest any actionable steps for people to do that. Did you see any actionable steps the reader was supposed to take?

The Department of Justice is already aware of the practice and has already spoken out against the use of roadside tests to be used as evidence at trial. If the author wanted all roadside tests to be eliminated, the author wasn't clear on that point. There wasn't enough information in the article about a clear solution.