What you’ll find are unique ideas that are different from the usual stories in the media.  Let’s see what he said.

1.  It is true that the U.S. high prison population is higher than almost all other countries.  Various reasons have been given, after research, to explain this.  One of the most popular came from law professor Michelle Alexander in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow.  Professor Alexander said the high prison population—mostly African-American—came because of tough drug laws.  The laws discriminated against black people and the “war on drugs,” starting in the 1980s, caused black youth to be locked up more than whites.
2. A new study, based on statistical research also, forms the basis of James Forman Jr’s book, Locking Up Our Own.  Using research by others, Mr. Forman says it’s not the drug crimes that have led to a high prison population.  In fact, if all drug offenders were released today we’d still have a high prison population.  That’s because most offenders in prison are there because they committed serious felonies like murder, rape, and armed robbery.  I can tell you after years of working as a Public Defender, 95%+ of clients I represented accused of serious crimes, pleaded guilty—because they were guilty.
3. Mr. Forman points out that even in black communities where law enforcement and prosecutors are African-American, in a desperate effort to combat the high levels of crime, they, also, have been “tough on crime” and encouraged the imprisonment of black Americans.
4. So why the high prison population?  Mr. Forman, and others, say it’s because the local prosecutors have the discretion to charge crimes or not.  At a time when crime rates nationally are falling, prosecutors are still charging more felony suspects with serious crimes that are punished with prison sentences.
5. However, the good news is that these prosecutors are changing and considering alternative ways of dealing with serious crime.  For one thing, thank goodness, crime of all types is down.  These local prosecutors are more careful about charging crimes that contain prison sentences.

The other encouraging part of this pattern is that you can have an effect on the process.  Most prison sentences come from local courts.  Also, local prosecutors are elected by the public.  Become aware of these races and who the candidates are.  Check to see what they think about the high prison population.  Do they have a new message instead of the old “get tough on crime and lock them up?”

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Answer: It depends! (Okay, I’ve been a lawyer for 30+ years)  Here’s the best lawyer money can buy.

The idea that money can get you the best defense lawyer to get you out of trouble is prevalant among people. It can be true, but for reasons you may not know. Here’s why–

I’ve tried over 100 jury trials, both as a prosecutor and defense lawyer, and with the exception of an occasional quirky, run-away jury, they usually get it right. They aren’t susceptible to “smoke and mirrors” from the lawyers. In my experience, juries focus on the evidence, as they should, rather than on the flashy, expensive lawyers. This means, no matter how good your lawyer is, if the evidence against you is overwhelming, you’ll probably be convicted.

What a good defense lawyer can do is to exploit any weaknesses in the evidence.  So, who is the best lawyer money can buy and why do the “famous” lawyers seem to be better than others?

Actually, as day-to-day lawyers for accused people, Public Defenders are the best. They practice nothing but criminal law, know the intricacies of the system, and know all the tricks that will work with the judges. So why don’t Public Defenders win most of their cases?

They have a couple problems to overcome. For one, they cannot choose their cases. A private lawyer, regardless of pay, can always turn down a “loser.” Public Defenders must handle the worst cases with the least defenses before juries. Of course, they’re going to lose often as a result. Probably no lawyer could win these kinds of cases.

Second, since they’re representing poor people, it’s easier to convict these defendants. Why? Because the juries, for the most part, are middle-class people drawn from the community. If the defendant is working, has a family, dresses well, and has an education, the jurors can identify with that defendant, to some degree. Public Defender clients, by definition, don’t have any of the above advantages. They often even look like criminals. (Well, they are, aren’t they?)

As a prosecutor, one of the toughest defendants I tried to convict had been a US Air Force veteran, had a full time job, had a college degree, came to court everyday with a blue suit and his wife, who sat in the front row. He was good looking and sounded intelligent. The jury acquitted him. Conversely, most Public Defender clients don’t look this way at all.

Does that mean the more expensive defense lawyer is the best lawyer money can buy? Sometimes, it could be true, particularly if the lawyer uses some of the fee for investigation, both on site and scientific.

Regardless, each lawyer must deal with the evidence against his/her client. If it’s weak, many lawyers could prevail. If it’s overwhelming, it’ll be tough for all defense lawyers.

What do you think? Have you had any exeriences good or bad?

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Technically, my job defending anyone is to force the State to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. If I have personal doubts as to my client’s innocence, I never even breathe the word “innocent.” Instead, I remind the jury to evaluate the State’s case; the defendant is presumed innocent by the system. The funny part is that I’ve rarely had a client admit they were guilty. Even if it looked pretty obvious, they maintained their innocence. And the more you get into a case, the murkier facts often become. So many times, I’m not sure who’s an innocent or guilty person.

Maybe the best way to let you know how this feels is to tell you a story of a case I tried several years ago.

It involved a young man, 17 years old, who was married. They were both poor and struggled to make ends meet. One night when the boy–I’ll call him Jim–came home after looking for a job during the day, he found his wife having sex with another man on the couch of their apartment.

Jim erupted in anger and pain. First, he kicked the other man out then turned on the woman. A fight started and he strangled her to death by choking her with his hands. That was gruesome enough but afterward, to divert attention from him–the obvious culprit–he stripped her body, spray-painted it in gang graffiti, and left her in the middle of an intersection to make it look like a gang crime.

After having been charged with Murder in the 1st degree, he was certified and transferred to adult court where I met him. Because the crime was so heinous and the proseutor’s case was so strong, they didn’t offer Jim any kind of a plea bargain. Like any person looking at life imprisonment, Jim found it hard to plead guilty, even though he eventually admitted he killed her. We set the case for trial, which was his right to demand.

From my standpoint as his lawyer, sometimes the charging decision made by the prosecutor does not fit the crime. In other words, maybe the accused person is not guilty of Assault 1 but is guilty of Assault 3, a lesser crime with a shorter penalty. That was the strategy in Jim’s case. I had two goals: maybe the jury would have sympathy for the young guy and convict him of something less serious or the facts, as determined in a trial through the witnesses, wouldn’t warrant the full Murder 1 conviction. So, we launched into the trial with this crime of the heart.

When the Medical Examiner who’d performed the autopsy on the victim testified, he broke the case wide open–to Jim’s favor.

Since I hate to write lengthy blogs, I’ll pause for now and continue the story with my next one.

The post How can you defend a guilty person!? Part 1 appeared first on Colin T. Nelson.

1.  Police officers always pushed me to get their cases charged.  When I met with them, they summarized the evidence.  In my mind, I thought of how I was going to prove each element of the crime and if the evidence supported it.  If not, I’d decline the case or ask for more investigation.  Even if the evidence was weak, most police officers pushed me to charge it out.  Makes sense, if they’ve spent the time investigating.

2.  Because of their desire to get their cases charged, some police officers would shade the evidence or exaggerate what they had.  It took me months to learn the “art” of charging the correct crime that really fit the evidence—regardless of what the police officer wanted.

3.  Does this mean that police officers lie?  I never met any that I knew were lying directly to me.  I did assume that some of their reports “stretched” the evidence at times.  Particularly, in controversial area like the right to stop and search citizens, I found lots of stretching of evidence for the police officer’s benefit.

4.  What about the “militarization” of local police officers?  Most cities have gladly taken the federal money and military equipment.  Most of the police officers I worked with had a “we versus them” attitude.  After all the difficult work of catching criminals, they often felt the system, the judges, defense lawyers, and juries all worked against them and for the protection of the guilty criminals.  The police officers I worked with certainly didn’t want to harm anyone unnecessarily, but the fancy equipment and its use was justified by their desire to even the odds that they felt were against them.

5.  I knew many police officers who worked endlessly on serious cases—even on their own time—because they felt a duty to the victims and the community.  These are the unsung heroes that the media rarely tells us about.

6.  Where did the most violence occur with police officers?  Without a doubt, it was the SWAT teams.  They usually broke into homes in search of drugs or to serve warrants for the arrest of suspects.  When they suddenly smashed in doors and broke into people’s homes, all kinds of things went wrong and people were needlessly hurt.  The action was always justified by the need for speed and surprise, but they left a lot of wreckage in their wake.

What experiences have you had with police officers?  Good or bad?

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1.  The level of violence on both sides—the community and the police—has gone up, unfortunately.  We saw that in Ferguson, Missouri with the shooting of the young man and the civil violence that followed.  I first started working in criminal law 30+ years ago.  I remember cops retiring and bragging that during their entire career, they’d never once drawn their gun.  They were proud to have avoided any tragedy as a result of a shooting.  I don’t know why violence has increased.  But cops feel unsafe on the streets and so does the community.  This probably causes the cops to sometimes shoot and “ask questions later.”

2.  Thanks to gifts to local police departments from the federal government, police now have many of the same weapons and armor used by the military in combat.  Perhaps, this equipment would be necessary in the event of a terrorist attack.  But against civilians, do the police really need all the firepower?  Does this give the police the wrong attitude?  Instead of policing neighborhoods cooperatively with citizens, it’s become a potential war zone—which is what happened in Ferguson, Missouri.  The photos I saw looked like combat in Iraq.  I get the feeling that after all the training in the use of these combat weapons, some police are even anxious to use them.  That’s wrong.

3.  The community bears responsibility also.  In my work as a prosecutor with minority communities, I saw tragic things happen.  We all know that minority communities are victimized more than others.  I worked on many cases where the police attempted to investigate serious crime but didn’t get cooperation from these communiites.  Of course, there’s a long-standing suspicion of the police and the system in these communities—for good reason.  But the bottom line is that those people most victimized are not getting help.

4.  The Ferguson, Missouri minority community is unhappy with the racial make-up of the local government and the police force.  The community doesn’t feel fully represented in either institution.  However, even though the minority community is about 2/3 of the population, only 6% of this community votes.  In the history of the United State, many minority groups have been similarly angry about discriminatory treatment.  But many of these groups went to the polls and took power in an effort to correct the problems.  Maybe the people in Ferguson, Missouri should do the same.

What ideas do you have about Ferguson, Missouri and what happened there?

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