On the matter of the lawyer, this oddly ties in with my remarks in the Super Hero discussion in the General Forum.
It doesn't matter what the lawyer's personal beliefs are, so long as he's doing what he's paid to do. That is to defend Esplin. And there are lawyers who will gleefully defend the worse scumbags society has to offer and believe me when I say, Visser One, formerly Visser Three, is a devoted church going Sunday school student who confesses on Wednesdays and helps little old ladies cross the street compared to some of the human criminals who have recieved legal council.
But alas, he got his fair trial if for no other reason than the human race can't very well condemn Visser Three on rights violations if they violate his rights. We'd want to be given the same considerations on any other planet, so in the interests of diplomacy, Visser Three was given that much.
And remember, it was Jake's call to let the slug live that long to begin with. Jake, Tobias and Ax had plenty of justifiable reasons to kill him. I mean hell, Marco got to kill the original Visser One, so no one is going to begrudge Tobias the right to avenge his father.