Charges for High-Level Crimes Look Good on Paper for the Departments, Even When They Could Not Be Sustained during a Trial
Lisa Pelosi: My opinion in that area is that it looks better for the departments if they charge you with a higher level crime. It just adds to their statistics that they’re making all these arrest on these serious crimes, when in fact, a lot of the crimes that are charged are, due to legal issues, never be able to be sustained at trial.
Overcharging Is Another Reason It Is Important to Have an Attorney Examine the Facts of a Case
Oftentimes, prosecutors do the same thing. It’s very important to have someone with legal knowledge see actually what the real crime that was allegedly committed is, and what someone should be charged with.
Because the higher that they charge, the more power they think they have on you. Meaning, they’ll force you to plea to a lower crime, but they’re not really giving you any deal. This is because they should’ve charged the lower crimes to start with.
That’s where the importance of legal analysis comes in, and that is often what an attorney will look at in the beginning to see really what the prosecutor should have charged.
How Often Can an Attorney Make a Positive Impact on a Case?
Interviewer: How often are you able to effect mitigation on someone’s charges?
An Attorney Will Work to Mitigate Not Only the Charge But the Sentencing as Well
Lisa Pelosi: Very often you’ll find that when you meet with the prosecutors and you go over the case with them, they themselves will realize when you point out to them they will realize that the initial charges were too higher level crime. That happens often.
Frequently we get deals where the top counts are dismissed, and we have the charges reduced. Oftentimes, because of the work I do, the sentencing is an area where we show the most mitigation.
Humanizing a Client to the Prosecutor Helps Them See the Benefit of a Person’s Life, Not Only the Occurrence of an Incident
We have clients that we worked with carefully to put together information about their lives, and we try to humanize someone, so that the prosecutors see that the client is not just a defendant. We explain to them that they have a family, that they have a job, that they pay child support and that they work hard.
When we look at sentencing, we should give that person the benefit of their whole life, not just look at the incident where the police arrested the person.
Also, that comes up in terms of if someone has a drug problem or an alcohol problem. Sometimes the behavior that led to the arrest is an offshoot of a drug abuse or alcohol abuse. Then we do our best to try to get programs for them, so that really we can try to help them rather than punish them by having them go upstate and serve years in jail. It’s a better approach to someone’s arrest.
