Legal Troubles? What Are The Best Criminal Defense Strategies?
Facing criminal charges and being found guilty can come with some major consequences that might potentially follow you forever and alter the options that you have about your career goals, housing opportunities, and many other things in life. When you have a criminal charge on your background check, it can limit what you can and can’t do going forward. That is why if you are charged with a crime, it is imperative that you find the best criminal defense attorney to plead your case and to build a winning defense to save you from some potentially disastrous consequences.
Since each criminal charge and situation is different, the case that will be built by an experienced criminal defense attorney will vary greatly from one instance to the next. Depending on what the charges are, your attorney will be in charge of finding a defense to either minimize your sentencing, or a loophole that might get the charges dismissed altogether. The biggest problem with any criminal charges – and the thing that can’t be altered – are the facts. Facts are facts, period. A criminal defendant gains nothing by not being open and completely honest about the events leading to their arrest. In fact, if you aren’t honest about your actions, it will ensure that your criminal defense attorney can’t be ready to defend you.
There are always more versions of the truth than just yours, especially when you are pleading a criminal defense. For example, if someone is being charged with murder, the version of the eyewitness might be that someone murdered someone else, and they would recount what they saw. The defendant in the trial, however, might have been threatened in some way that the witness didn’t see, so, their version would be self-defense, not murder. That is why knowing the truth and all the events that led to your charges is so important.
The “truth” according to a criminal defense attorney
The criminal defense lawyer in any trial is in charge of telling the story of what happened – but there are many ways that the truth can be told. It is possible that both the prosecutor and the criminal defense have the same facts, but that their stories are completely different from one another. And when it comes to putting on a criminal defense, the attorney who wins will be the one that tells the best story.
Pleading not guilty or guilty
Although each defendant will have their own version of why they are not guilty, their denial of guilt will typically fall into three different categories:
- Complete denial. When a defendant insists that they are not guilty due to a complete denial, they insist that they could not have physically committed the crime, period. Things like having an alibi for your whereabouts that negates the potential that you could even be guilty would fall under the “complete denial” category
- A “confession” is when someone admits that they were in fact to blame for the crime and they confess that they are guilty of the charges they are facing. The two stories are nearly the same.
- The admittance…but. “The admittance of the actions… but” is where the defendant says that they did do what they are accused of, but that they had to because they had no other options. An example of “an admittance but” would be if someone shot another person and killed them. They admit that they did shoot the other person, but that there was a history of domestic violence, and that they were in danger of losing their life. In instances where there are mitigating circumstances, admitting you did something does not always end in a guilty charge.
Been Accused?
If you are accused of a crime, it is imperative that whether you are guilty or not, you have a criminal defense attorney on your side to be the best storyteller. Facts are facts, and the truth is the truth. But there are very different versions of the truth depending on how the story is told. To make sure that you aren’t charged with a crime, hire a professional, such as Robb MacDonald, who tells a better story than the prosecutor, to help protect you and your future.