Denver criminal defense lawyer / how to be your own lawyer

As a rule, it's a bad idea to try to be your own criminal defense lawyer. The law is simply too complicated, the rules of evidence too inane, and the complexities too difficult to figure out. In all but the most minor cases you should either hire a Denver criminal defense lawyer or apply for an attorney from the public defender's office. But in certain cases, you don't have the right to have an attorney appointed from the public defender. And some of these cases are simple enough that it may not add value to hire an attorney. You should probably get a consultation from a lawyer to see if they can help you, but if it's going to cost more to pay a lawyer than it would to be convicted (like is the case in a lot of pretty minor speeding cases) you may not want to hire one. Sometimes an attorney will know tricks they can use to get a case dismissed, which is why you need to do a consultation with a Denver criminal defense lawyer, but that's not always the case. So where do you go from there?

Basically, these minor cases are almost entirely traffic cases. Fortunately for lay people, the rules of evidence are much more relaxed for traffic infractions (as opposed to offenses, a distinction I'll get in to more later). Basically, the judge decides what comes in to evidence, and that means essentially everything comes in to evidence. So you want to marshal the evidence you can find, which means photographs from the scene of the ticket, pictures of what the officer might have seen, anything you can find that indicates the officer may not have had a clear view of the scene, and present that all to the judge. You won't be able to get discovery in advance of a hearing for a traffic infraction since again the rules are different. You will have the opportunity to examine the police officer's file, which will probably be confusing.

Just state your case concisely after the officer is done, and show the evidence you have brought. Technicalities relating to a radar gun or police equipment are unlikely to succeed in the hands of a layperson. Again, basically keep everything in the presentation very simple, as to avoid moving parts. That's probably the best way to be your own lawyer.