In my few years of work, I’ve encountered some really bad mitigation pleas. 

For example, when I first started work, I observed a case of a lady prosecuted for a breach of financial regulations in failing to disclose the extent of her indebtedness.  In mitigation, the lawyer defending her listed all her debts and pleaded for leniency because of those debts.  That list included debts that the lady did not disclose (perhaps deliberately) during the investigations.  Needless to say, the Court was not impressed and meted out a heavier sentence.

The front page of the Straits Times today (14 April 2006) carried a report about a man who was prosecuted for 40-something instances of sexually abusing his five daughters with the assistance of, get this, of his multiple wives.  According to the report, he subverted parts of the Quran to convince his wives to do so, arguing that he had ownership over his children and that this extended to having sex with them.  These were not uneducated women, mind you, some were in fact polytechnic graduates.  Nonetheless, and very amazingly, these dutiful wives complied and helped prepare their daughters for these incestuous encounters with the father.  The eldest daughter finally, and thankfully, had the sense to report him to the police.

More unbelievable than the facts of the above case itself, and somewhat hilarious if not for the tragedy of the situation, is the mitigation plea put forward by the man’s lawyer.  If the report is to be believed, the plea was made along these lines :

"The man’s lawyer … said the patriach, who ran his own firm, was stressed out by having to provide for his large family.  [ My note : it's self-induced - the man had four wives and twenty children ].  To add to these worries, he learnt that the girls were behaving inappropriately with boys.  He concluded that having sex with his daughters to ’satisfy’ them, so they would be less likely to go with others, was the lesser of  two evils …"

What sort of mitigation plea is that ?  I trust that the Court will be unimpressed.