Criminal Trials – General George S Patton Had It Right
If you take a visit to any courthouse, in Maryland or elsewhere, you will see a lot of cases plea out to some or occasionally all criminal charges. Some of these cases could have been set for trial instead, but the defense attorneys and their clients together choose to accept a guilty plea (or pleas) instead. If you take an hour on a day off and visit criminal court for yourself, you will observe this pattern.
Sometimes plea agreements in criminal cases are in the interest of the client; sometimes they help reduce possible exposure to the client or preserve some other advantages. In such cases, the defense attorneys are doing their jobs well and deserve professional respect. But criminal defense attorneys who strive for excellence NEVER recommend a plea deal without a solid reason for doing so.
Prosecutors offer plea deals because it’s in their interest – their career, avoiding an embarrassing loss, difficulty in proving the case, their laziness, relations with other law enforcement officials, whatever – to do so. Prosecutors are NOT looking out for the criminal defendant’s rights; though they have the duty to refrain from prosecutions without probable cause or willful violations of defendants’ rights, prosecutors’ prime motivation is – let’s face it – to protect their paychecks, HR file and benefits as public employees. They do not get paid, do not get raises or promotions, by caring about you; their job often is to wreck your life.
Some defense attorneys are vigorous in their protection of their clients; regrettably, not every criminal defense attorney is willing to fight and comes prepared to fight. At this office, the philosophy is to assume the fight – and not the plea – unless facts, applicable law and ultimately the preference of the client dictate otherwise. Trying criminal cases is what criminal defense is about and if an attorney has a reputation for trying cases and especially winning cases, prosecutors are inclined to take her or him much more seriously when it’s time to make a plea bargain or to negotiate out other terms. Conversely, defense attorneys who never try cases earn, over time, the disrespect of experienced prosecutors.
In any criminal courtroom, there are essentially two teams: Team Client, and Team Wreck the Client. The only people who are reliably on Team Client are the client and the defense attorney, and sometimes the client’s family. Everyone else in the courtroom – prosecutors, witnesses, bailiff, well-funded police, sheriff’s deputies, folks in the gallery taking notes and (all too often) jurors) – is presumably on Team Wreck the Client. (Ideally, judges are neutral per their judicial oath but life is not always ideal.)
Accordingly, criminal courtrooms are places where defense attorneys who strive for excellence go to struggle and stand strong for Team Client, not to work things out by pleading their clients out to Team Wreck the Client, unless that is clearly the smart move in a specific case. While criminal defendants enjoy the “presumption of innocence” in theory, in reality there is no “home field advantage” for clients accused of crimes. Whether the alleged crime is violating a left turn signal or premediated murder, the defense must face the concentrated power of the State, i.e. Team Wreck the Client, against him or her. Defense attorneys who are committed to doing their jobs properly recognize this as the environments facing their clients.
In the view of this Law Office, every criminal and traffic court file is – and must be – a trial unless a plea deal truly protects the Defendant, or the government surrenders and dismisses the case. This is the philosophy of the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey and we do not budge from it; the Law Office rejects vigorously the “pallbearer” or “undertaker” attitude that one sometimes sees from defense attorneys who have lost the will or discipline to fight, and who merely walk their clients’ freedom and good name to the “gravesite.” The Law Office fights for Team Client because it’s the right thing to do, because the client has the right to a fighter and because this is the business of the Law Office.
WWII 3rd Army Commander General George S. Patton said that “Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.” While this may not be true of all real Americans, it should be true of all real criminal defense attorneys regarding courtroom “battle” and it is definitely true of this practice. This is the Law Office’s philosophy on this topic.
