Criminal-Defense Articles > Role of Criminal Defense Lawyer

Role of Criminal Defense Lawyer
If you are being accused of a criminal conduct, you need a lawyer who can defend you. Your lawyer should be driven by the desire to defend you as of the prosecutor who is driven by the need to prosecute.
Only a criminal defense lawyer can protect you from the processes at work in the criminal case. An experienced criminal defense lawyer has the skill to learn the facts and applicable laws and regulations of your case quickly, and apply these things in the special arena of prosecutors, search warrants, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and the Bill of Rights.

There are lawyers, and then there are criminal defense lawyers. The criminal defense lawyers always think in terms of attacking a case, knowing that they must focus on what the other side is trying to prove so that this 'proof' can be picked apart, piece-by-piece. Criminal defense lawyers appreciate that the opponent must prove a charge against their client "beyond a reasonable doubt," a standard of proof that must be exploited, a standard of proof much higher than civil lawyers applies in their cases.

Civil lawyers, generally concern themselves with proving a case. Their main task is to present proof of some injury caused by the other side.
On the other hand, criminal defense lawyers attack cases with tools never used by civil lawyers. Apparatus of a criminal defense lawyer include: efforts to suppress evidence seized from an office, home, computer, or to repress interviews and statements, and to exclude business records.

The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution are such apparatus. The criminal procedure, criminal evidence, and changing case law relating to crimes are other such complex issues. The changing case law relating to crimes is a tool that is not usually used well by a lawyer who doesn't practice in the criminal courts daily.

Unless your lawyer regularly deals with such criminal law issues, his or her imagination may not be primed to seize upon the subtle nuances of the facts, which will permit the fashioning of a winning defense.
The criminal defense lawyers are trial lawyers. They live for jury trial. They prefer to go to trial, and recommend that option to clients more often than do their civil counterparts.

Civil lawyers tend to give conservative advice. It is usually better to negotiate and settle a case where money or property is involved, rather than bear the burden of monetary expense for a trial.
In a criminal case, a conservative approach will almost mean pleading guilty and seeking the least amount of punishment. However, in the best interests of the client, some times criminal cases are resolved through negotiation. A true criminal defense lawyer, however, approaches even plea negotiations with aggression. The defense lawyer must come out strong in persuading the prosecution that the weaknesses in its case justify a compromise on punishment.

The prosecutor must also be made to understand that the defense attorney knows how to try a case, and in fact likes jury trials. An attractive plea agreement with a substantial savings on jail time should be offered if the prosecutor wants to avoid the time and expense of a jury trial, and the risk of the defendant's acquittal.

A criminal defense lawyer prepares the defense from the beginning as if jury trial is inevitable. This is another reason why criminal defense lawyers very often practice law by themselves. It requires a great deal of lawyer time for preparing the case going for trial, more time than a lawyer can possibly charge the client for at three or four hundred dollars per hour.

As because the criminal lawyer has to work at an hourly rate effectively lower than that billed by civil lawyers, attorneys who are driven to defend people accused of crime are most often encouraged to open their own law practices. This is for the best. Criminal defense lawyers tend to be characters that don't fit in that entire well with other lawyers anyway.

Criminal defense lawyers have special skills. The criminal courtroom is a very different place. The lawyers who drafted your estate plan or helped your business "go public", mayn't have enough experience with the process of the criminal investigation to protect your every step of the way. They mayn't have the same expertise in front of a prosecution-friendly judge during the delicate pre-trial hearings which will determine how much of the prosecution's evidence will be allowed to go to the jury. If your criminal case has to go to trial, the civil lawyers mayn't have the proper frame of mind to aggressively tear into the prosecution's proof.

The civil lawyers mayn't have the overall experience and skill to decide whether you should go all the way through trial or seek a plea agreement. They mayn't have the expertise to look at the prosecution's case and size it up. A criminal defense lawyer possesses such skill and knows well that sometimes the question of whether a client is guilty is less important than the question of whether the prosecution can prove guilt.


Further reading resources

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class soapclient in /home/criminal/public_html/nusoap.php on line 4102