Denver criminal defense lawyer / arrest warrants

I've already talked fairly extensively on this blog about search warrants, which the police will need to get to search your person or your property unless the search falls into one of a number of different exceptions. If a warrantless search does not fall into one of those exceptions, the evidence can be thrown out of court by the judge depending on the argument made by your Denver criminal defense lawyer. It also may not be thrown out, but that's a totally different story. Of course, these aren't the kind of warrants that most defendants are likely to be terribly afraid of. Most people care more about their freedom than the integrity of their property, so an arrest warrant is what really scares people.

In many cases, you won't be able to have a Denver criminal defense lawyer help with an arrest warrant. That's because the warrant will have been issued without you even knowing it, and the sheriff will simply show up at the door to "serve" the warrant. Serving a warrant is just a nice way of saying arresting the charged defendant. At that moment a defendant will want to call a Denver criminal defense lawyer to help with the underlying case. Of course it will be pretty inconvenient, since the police can haul a defendant out of his or her house or workplace or wherever they can find that person.

That said, sometimes a defendant will find out that there is an outstanding warrant before it is served and the defendant is arrested. In this case an attorney can help a ton. A lawyer can work with the court to get rid of the warrant (a process known as "quashing") and schedule the case for a hearing. Sometimes the court will work with this, knowing that the defendant is not going to skip out having already voluntarily consented to jurisdiction. Then the case is set for an arraignment where bail is set and some other conditions might be imposed to make sure the defendant behaves while the case is pending, and make sure he makes all the court dates. Other times this won't work and the defendant will have to negotiate a surrender. This is something for a later post.

Denver criminal defense lawyer / things you won't go to jail for

An ordinance up for consideration in Boulder County demonstrates one of the great perils of attempting to defend yourself without a Denver criminal defense lawyer. Under the new ordinance, about 60 different ordinance violations would have their maximum penalties changed. Namely defendants would no longer face jail time for committing any of these offenses. While the ACLU supports it and it's a good idea, really it points to a larger farce in the system. People who commit these crimes will rarely face jail time in Boulder or in any other county in Colorado. Those maximum penalties are simply a sticker price. And like a sticker price on a car, it's basically used by the prosecutor to negotiate a more favorable outcome for him, and not to have to go to trial.

In many circumstances, even if the defendant does go to trial and is convicted of one of these relatively minor offenses, he will not even go to jail. At that point the judge has sentencing power. Judges know state and county budgets are strained right now and jails are overflowing. Defendants do not know that so they think they will automatically face the harshest penalty if they proceed to trial an are convicted. Denver criminal defense lawyers know that the actual maximum penalty frequently is not even close to the ones in the rule book. Basically if Boulder County passes this reform it would be a good thing. But it would not really make the criminal justice system any more lenient. When is the last time you heard of someone going to jail for littering? Me neither, people aren't even scared enough about littering charges to call me. That said this basically just makes things a little bit simpler and cheaper, but is no significant change. Significant change would be for more significant crimes than littering or public urination.

Denver criminal defense lawyer / going on your own

Paying the fee for a Denver criminal defense lawyer will cost money. Depending on the crime you're accused of, it might cost quite a lot of money. In some cases, a public defender will be appointed for you. However, even those of very, very modest means will not be eligible. Basically a defendant needs to be completely indigent to be eligible for an attorney free of charge. If you've got a house you can borrow against, the county assumes you can hire a Denver criminal defense lawyer. Same if you have anything resembling a steady job. That raises the question for a someone barely above the guideline: can you do it without a Denver criminal defense lawyer?

In every court in America, you have the right to represent yourself. This is called acting pro se. In fact, a good number of defendants choose to do that every single day. The court will give a pro se defendant some amount of guidance on the procedural issues. The prosecutor will do their best to explain any plea offers in a way you can understand it as a lay person. Nobody is going to actively try to fleece a defendant in this process.

That said, none of these people will offer you legal advice. They'll help you understand the process and when to be where, but they can't explain the law. They can't explain what the law means to your case. And they won't really explain what the different plea agreements mean to you. Sure they can tell you what the sentence is. But they won't be able to tell you what your different defenses to the case are, and what your chances of winning at trial are. And if you choose to plead not guilty and go to trial, you'll be up against an experienced prosecutor who knows the rules of evidence and the ins and outs of the rules. You need your own lawyer to combat this.

Denver criminal defense lawyer / the importance of currency

No, not money. The reason it's important for a Denver criminal defense lawyer to stay on top of stuff is because things change. Murder more or less stays the same. The rules of evidence don't really change that much, and speeding is still going over the speed limit. Where Denver criminal defense lawyers need to do their work is on more complex evidentiary issues in bigger cases, like arson:

Innocence Projects founded to exonerate inmates through DNA testing have begun accepting arson cases, the AP story says. Experts say research is challenging assumptions about how fires spread and what kind of evidence signals arson. One example: Experts used to conclude that hot-burning fires were the result of arson. New research, however, finds no correlation. Another example: A V-shaped pattern on the wall was once thought to be proof of arson. It’s now thought to indicate only where the fire started.

These clues were once tell-tale evidence, considered by experts to be as foolproof in figuring out whether a fire was simply a furnace issue gone bad or murder. And these arson cases are relatively common and almost always murders. The insurance fraud cases do not get innocence project attention. They are also incredibly hard to prove by direct evidence, since anything that was used to start the fire probably burned right up, and the cause of death is always smoke inhalation or burns. That means basically the only evidence available is circumstantial evidence of motive and scientific evidence of whether the fire was started intentionally or not. And even much evidence of motive is likely to be excluded as prejudicial. At any rate, the scientific evidence ends up being an important, and often fatal, component of the trial. That's why it's important to have a Denver criminal defense lawyer who knows the new developments.

Denver criminal defense lawyer / expanding record sealing

Some interesting news from New York State regarding record sealing. It appears the Bar Association is pushing for legislation that would allow those convicted of most misdemeanors and minor felonies to have their record sealed after after a statutory waiting period (five years for misdemeanors and eight years for felonies). Any Denver criminal defense lawyer will tell you that it's considerably harder to get your record sealed in Colorado. Basically no convictions can be sealed except for deferred judgments (which technically aren't convictions at all, they are dismissals) and a narrow set of minor drug related offenses. Denver criminal defense lawyers also would bemoan this policy, and with good reason. I don't see how it serves any real purpose.

For some reason the District Attorneys of New York are opposing this rule change. Again I have no idea how anybody is served by giving those convicted of minor offenses a lifelong criminal record. It seems pretty unlikely that this would have any deterrent effect. If you're not deterred by jail time or hefty fines, how would you be deterred by the possibility of it coming up in a background check when applying for a job 10 years later? And it's not like these crimes are going to indicate serious moral short comings. The New York law specifically excludes any crimes against the elderly or against children, and as stated above it's limited to relatively minor offenses.

I suppose an argument could be made for transparency. Employers may have a right to know if people they are about to hire has kept his nose clean. But that's pretty hard to justify in light of our other policies. Don't juries then have the right to know about all the evidence that's been suppressed at trial? Or about the defendant's criminal history? It just seems like the state makes these sorts of decisions all the time, and really the criminal record is more a form of continued punishment than any sort of transparency mechanism.

Denver criminal defense lawyer / deferred judgments

A common plea agreement that Denver criminal defense lawyers can negotiate for their clients is a deferred judgment. This is somewhat confusing for a lot of defendants. What in the world is it? Basically this is a situation a defendant pleads guilty on the condition that he will not actually be sentenced for the crime. The court takes the guilty plea in open court on the record, but does not make the judgment final or "enter" the judgment. The judge also does not sentence the defendant. Instead, the judgment and sentencing are deferred for a certain period of time. At that point, if certain conditions are met, the case can be dismissed.

Functionally, this whole thing appears a lot like probation. The conditions involve things like community service, and not committing additional crimes for a stated period, a year or six months. Your Denver criminal defense lawyer can advise as to the actual consequences. In any case, even though it resembles a probationary sentence, if the conditions are fulfilled the case can be dismissed, unlike in the case of a probationary case where it is actually a conviction.

Because the conviction is never finalized and because there is technically no sentence, sometimes these cases are eligible for record sealing. Again, your Denver criminal defense lawyer can advise you on the possibility of this. However this is not an option in every case, so you should learn about it before you plead guilty and accept the deferred judgment. Although a conviction will not show up on your record, the police records and charges will. For some people this will be problematic, and record sealing can help with that. For others it will be no big deal.

In any case, the big things with deferred judgments are to know and follow the conditions of the judgment, and also know the exact consequences of your deferred judgments. Because like with just about everything else, every deferred judgment case is different.

Denver criminal defense lawyer / out of state traffic offenses

One question a lot of folks have for me as a Denver criminal defense lawyer is what happens to your driving record if you commit a traffic offense out of state? Basically, the process is split into two parts. A Denver criminal defense lawyer can help with either. The part with the DMV is treated more like a regulatory crime. This is where you may or may not lose your driver's license. A state's DMV only has the power to regulate driver's licenses issued by them.

By contrast, the criminal aspect of the case is where a court can hand out fines and prison time. If you are from out of state and commit a crime in Colorado, you will be subject to the jurisdiction of the state of Colorado and the court for whichever county or district that crime occurs in. That means out of state defendants should hire a Denver criminal defense lawyer to aid in their defense.

On the other hand, the Colorado Department of Revenue (the department that runs the Colorado DMV) only has control over Colorado drivers licenses. That doesn't mean an out of state driver is off scot free. Colorado and most other states participate in the Driver's License Compact. That means they report any crimes or violations to the state where the license was issued. That state's DMV or Department of Revenue or corresponding department decides how to handle the suspension or lack thereof. Although most states have pretty similar traffic laws, they aren't all the same. That means that it's important for you and your criminal defense lawyer to know the consequences of the conviction in one state on your driver's license in your home state. Otherwise a defendant can end up with a nasty surprise in the form of either a license suspension he didn't see coming, or an increase in insurance rates due to extra points.