What to Do If You’ve Been Wrongfully Charged with a Crime
The American justice system is not infallible. It’s not unusual for innocent people to be charged with crimes. Sometimes the innocent are even convicted of crimes they had nothing to do with, and sentenced to periods of imprisonment. While prosecutors and law enforcement are becoming a lot better at identifying criminals and ensuring the innocent are not wrongly charged, mistakes still happen. This post plans to explore this topic in more detail and will tell you what you need to do if you have been charged with a crime that you did not commit.
Hiring Legal Support
The first thing that you need to do if you believe that you have been wrongfully charged with a crime is to get in touch with an attorney. In truth, even if you are guilty of the crime you’ve been charged with, you need an attorney’s support. According to this Green Bay criminal defense attorney, a lawyer will be able to give you the care and support you need to beat your charges and walk away without punishment. It’s becoming more and more common for people to skimp on legal representation. This is mainly due to the cost of living crisis and rising levels of inflation. You need the best defense you can get, so do not try and cut corners on it just to save money. Some attorneys operate on a no-win no-fee basis, though it’s uncommon for criminal defense attorneys to do this. Typically only personal injury lawyers do this.
If you are going to go ahead and take this post’s advice and hire a lawyer, find an experienced one. A good way to tell whether a firm is experienced or not is to actually reach out to them and ask them for their win-to-loss ratio in court. The higher a firm’s win ratio is, the more likely it is that they’ll be able to provide you with the care and attention that you need. Something else that’s worth noting is that reviews can tell you a lot about a lawyer. A lawyer’s reviews can give you a glimpse into what working with them is going to be like. If a lawyer does not have any reviews, this is not necessarily a bad sign and could just suggest that they haven’t ever done anything that irritated or annoyed their customers.
Conducting Research
If you’ve been charged with a crime you had nothing to do with, you need to do as much research as you can and find out what has happened. The police should tell you more or less everything they know when they interview you. Under no circumstances should you ever attend a police interview without a lawyer present. It’s common for the police to try and get suspects to talk without a lawyer being there so that they can force confessions. Most of the people who were convicted of crimes that they did not commit did so because they gave statements admitting to things they had nothing to do with, mainly under threat of violence.
A good way to research your crimes is to ask your lawyer for your discovery pack. Your discovery pack will contain all information pertinent to your case. If you are struggling to get through the information in this pack (or if you do not know what any of it means), get in touch with your attorney and ask them to explain it to you. Your attorney should be more than willing to explain the contents of your discovery pack to you and elaborate upon what the government is saying you did.
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Staying Silent
Silence is essential when you’re sitting in an interview room and a lawyer is not present. Under no circumstances should you ever admit to a crime in front of the police, even if you were guilty of it. Admitting to crimes in the police interview room can have devastating consequences for you and your chances of ever beating the case you’ve been charged with. Admissions of guilt can’t be walked back once they are submitted as evidence to the court. Only if you were under duress at the time of your conviction can you demand it be dismissed.
Police will employ various underhanded tactics to try and get an admission of guilt out of you. Most of their efforts will be made before your lawyer arrives. This is because once your lawyer has arrived, they are not going to be able to play around with you as easily. Make sure that when you are picking a lawyer, you pick one who’s experienced in dealing with law enforcement games and tactics. An experienced lawyer will see right through their games and ensure that you do not end up making any mistakes that could cost you later on.
Knowing Your Rights
You need to know what your rights are. If you don’t know what they are, the police will be able to abuse and take advantage of you. Educating yourself about your rights can be a difficult thing to do if you have no knowledge of the law and do not have a real interest in it. At least take the time to educate yourself about the nuances of your case and your rights as they relate to them. Also understand you are under no legal obligation to give a statement if you don’t want to, so if the police try and force you to, decline.
If you want to learn more about your rights, the best person to talk to is an attorney. Again: An attorney will be able to work closely with you and deal with your case in the best way possible. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they can represent themselves (or at least educate themselves about the law on their own). Self-representation is one of the biggest mistakes a defendant can make and rarely ends well. Make sure that you enlist a professional’s support.
If you have been wrongfully charged with a crime, you need to do everything you can to protect your rights. The best thing to do is to get in touch with a lawyer. A lawyer will be able to work with you on your case and make sure your rights are not infringed on and ensure you do not do anything that could get you in more trouble, i.e., a false admission of guilt.
