Articles Tagged with California criminal attorney

It is incredibly unnerving for an innocent individual to be charged with a crime and dragged through the criminal justice system, especially if a conviction could lead to serious time behind bars! That is why it is so important for suspects to take advantage of their Fifth Amendment rights and request a local attorney at the first sign of an arrest, then say absolutely nothing without that attorney sitting next to them. 

Release? 

In the best case scenario, the investigators will swiftly appreciate that they have the wrong person in custody and release a suspect with apologies for the inconvenience—but that is not the typical outcome. The district attorney could hear the basics of the case before trial and decide that there is not enough evidence to secure a conviction and instruct police to release the suspect—but that is not something to count on either, nor is it necessarily a permanent solution, as they could always build their case and come after the suspect at a later date.

Plea Bargaining

Next up is a plea deal. While many people who insist on their innocence may feel unenthusiastic about accepting a deal where they acknowledge guilt for a lesser crime, the benefits of plea bargaining can make it worth considering. Whether a defendant eventually accepts a deal or not, it is definitely worth listening to and allowing an attorney to negotiate a positive outcome. If no deal is offered, or if one is rejected, the defendant is heading to a trial.  

Trial

Though television drama makes it appear otherwise, only a minority of cases ever make it to trial. The Marshall Project reports that 94% of state-level felony convictions are achieved through plea bargaining, with just 6% of cases ever making it to a courtroom. Federal rates are even lower, with roughly three percent of convictions coming from a jury verdict. If a case is one of the few to make it to trial, the prosecution is likely feeling pretty confident about its case. The goal for any defendant is an acquittal, of course, or a verdict of not guilty.

Verdict 

It is important to remember that every defendant is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. In a criminal trial, that means it is up to the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt for every element of the charge. Simply put, the prosecutor, through the evidence they present, must persuade a jury that there is no other reasonable explanation for the crime, so the jury is virtually certain of a defendant’s guilt. The defense simply has to convince the jury that there is a realistic possibility that someone else might be guilty. If that happens, a jury will find the defendant not guilty, and the court will acquit. That wraps it up, and you can never be tried on these charges again.

Hung Jury

When a case is complex or emotional, juries may struggle to come to an agreement on a verdict by the required voting margin. While certainly a better outcome than a finding of guilt, this is a result that could mean another trial is in your future. The excruciating decision to put more time and money into a whole new trial can be hard-hitting. A tough defense attorney will pressure the prosecutor to drop the whole thing at this point, but that decision is exclusively in the prosecutor’s hands. Continue reading

Anyone who has ever been charged with a crime knows that, more often than not, the case is settled long before it goes to trial. According to Pew Research, only two out of every 100 federal criminal cases make it that far. In 90% of these cases, people pleaded guilty, likely in exchange for lesser charges, and the charges are dropped in the remaining eight percent of federal cases. State cases are tried with more frequency, though still only at a rate of about 5% to 10%. All these statistics are the reality for the majority of people charged with a crime. But what about those who do go to trial? What can be expected? 

The Narrative

For starters, defendants can expect the prosecution to present a narrative with a particular theme highlighting the character flaws of the alleged criminal. Greed, indifference, callousness, negligence — these are all characteristics that could be nailed onto the defendant to win the jury over to the prosecution’s way of seeing the evidence. 

If you watch any crime drama on television, you know the scoop: the case could be up in the air with no way to nab the culprit—until miraculously, a fingerprint or a wayward strand of hair is discovered by a fervent detective. Instantaneously, it seems, the evidence is analyzed in the lab, proving without question who is guilty of the crime. The perpetrator goes to jail, and justice is served. But how accurate is this depiction of the criminal justice system at work? If you are being charged with criminal activity and there is forensic evidence that puts you at the crime scene, there are several things you should know. 

Justice is Slow

For starters, unlike on TV, it takes a lot of time — weeks, months, and sometimes years — after a crime is reported until it goes to trial. Moreover, forensic evidence is not quite as cut and dried as it appears on the screen.

• Hair analysis: The forensic analysis of hair has been under scrutiny of late—in fact, it is sometimes referred to as pseudoscience. That is because so many of the characteristics of hair are extremely common, so the likelihood of an accurate match is slim to none.  According to The Guardian, one expert in the field stated that microscopic examinations are essentially without value except as a method to exclude a suspect.
• Fingerprints: Examiners — the majority of whom have never been required to pass any sort of accreditation or testing standards — are taught to report their findings with certainty. Unbelievably, however, training standards for fingerprint analysts vary from state to state, and many of the conclusions reached by these fingerprint “experts” should be viewed as less than airtight, to say the least. The problems with fingerprint identifications are becoming more and more well-known, leading many courts across the country to exclude fingerprint evidence altogether! That is because the accuracy of fingerprint identifications has not ever really been tested.  

Challenging “Expert” Testimony

When your defense team encounters what they consider dubious conclusions made by a supposed expert, Daubert Motions can challenge the testimony based on any of three key areas:

• The qualifications of the “specialist”;
• The methodology used to arrive at specific conclusions;
• The accuracy of the science itself.

These are precisely the types of challenges that give a judge reason to doubt the legitimacy of “expert” testimony. Such challenges could benefit defendants by prompting a judge to instruct a jury to give less weight to such testimony, to strike the testimony related to that evidence altogether, or even to dismiss the case outright.   Continue reading