People assume that when they are facing a criminal charge, they need to make a statement or they are going to look guilty. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The law is very clear and not just the law, but the Constitution. You have a right to remain silent and the choice that you make to remain silent cannot be used against you. That’s a constitutional protection that you have. Often, early in an investigation, a cop might say something to suggest that if you don’t make a statement, they can’t hear your side of the story. That’s all trickery to get a statement from you.
There might be certain circumstances where making a statement could be helpful. However, you’ve got to talk to your attorney about it and make that decision, very carefully, because any time you make a statement, the risk and the overwhelming odds are that no matter what you say, they are going to pick it apart and use against you.
Is It Advisable To Plead Guilty And Try To Get A Deal?
Oftentimes, people call us when they are looking at a deal and they want to know if it is a good idea or not. Cutting a deal in a sex crime prosecution is a case by case type of analysis. You have to have an attorney who knows how to fight because if you look at the question of whether you should take a deal or fight it and you are using an attorney who hasn’t had the experience to know just how these cases might go, you are just getting advice from someone who is scared to litigate. At Golden Law, we are not scared to go to trial.
Our mindset, when we take a case on, is we are going to fight this all the way through. That doesn’t mean our clients don’t take deals. Sometimes, the best outcome for you is to have a deal that avoids certain risks, like sex offender registration or long term confinement. Negotiation is always on the table. You don’t want an attorney who is going to say the only thing that they do is fight. You want them to be willing to do that but you don’t want someone who is unwilling to cut a deal.
We want the best possible outcome for our clients. We are going to go through all the facts of your case, lay out what we’ve seen in our history, and what the risks are. Some clients are gamblers and they are willing to go for it. Others want to play it safe. Make sure you have an attorney who is willing to fight but isn’t desperate to fight.
Will I Lose My Case If I Make A Statement To My Investigators?
Making a statement at any point in your case doesn’t seal the deal, even if the statement that was made to the investigators was a confession or a partial confession. It doesn’t mean the case is over. We’ve handled hundreds of cases, all the way through trial, where people made previous statements, and we won. People have made actual confessions to doing the crime and they were found not guilty.
Often, what happens in the context of an investigation is that investigators manipulate statements. When you have previously made a statement that is now being used against you, you need an attorney with experience to help you fight the circumstances as to why you made that statement and what the statement means. A confession is far from an easily defined thing and juries tend to be very forgiving of someone who makes statements under conditions of duress. They look for indications as to whether those statements were manipulated by investigators.
We have found that through effective cross-examination of investigators, juries are very forgiving if the circumstances of the statement were under any sort of adverse conditions. What you are looking for, if you’ve made a prior statement, is an attorney who has got a lot of experience handling that situation in front of a judge or jury. This means trying to get a judge to suppress the statement or handling it in front of a jury in how they explain why that statement was made and what different types of meaning the statement might have. Just because you made a statement does not mean your case is over. In fact, there could be a lot of fight ahead for you.
