When a potential criminal client walks into our office, either having been arrested or on the precipice of being arrested, that initial interview must be handled very carefully.

Now I realize that people's perceptions of what goes on between a lawyer and their client is that the lawyer is telling the client, look I'm your lawyer, you have to tell the truth, did you do it?

Well, that is complete fiction, as the reality is that a vast majority of the time, we never ask the defendant if they did it.

What we do ask them is what are the cops saying you did, which is a very different question, because at an initial interview, we have not seen the discovery.

So all that is known by the client is what law enforcement is accusing them of and whether or not they are involved.

So not only do we not ask them whether or not they committed the crime, we go further than that.

We tell them not to tell us whether or not they committed the crime, but simply to tell us what the cops are saying that they did.

The reason that we do that is because if a defendant was to make an admission to us at any point, and then when it comes time at trial to decide whether or not they are going to testify, if through the discovery process, a different theory of the case is developed, which contradicts anything that our client may have told us initially, then we cannot put them on the stand to testify to any other version, other than the original thing that they told us.

Because that would be subordinate perjury.

Look, the reality of the situation is that it is extremely rare for a client to walk in and spill their guts and admit to anything.

The typical thing that we hear is that they didn't do it. You know, the only guilty man in Shawshank.

So for us as defense attorneys, the combination of the presumption of innocence and the fact that the client is telling us that they are in fact innocent, sets the baseline from where we start and where we will go from there.

As the case progresses over the months and as discovery starts coming in from the state, we begin looking at the case with a critical eye.

Now, as a bit of a side note, in a high profile case, we never allow what is being reported by the media to influence our evaluation of the case.

Because what is contained in news reports and articles is based solely on the state's theory of the case.

And remember, until the evidence is vetted and tested at trial, that's all it is, theory.

If you're a long time listener of the pod, you know that we stress to you out there as critical thinkers to table your natural instinct to form an opinion based on what you see and hear in the media pretrial and to wait until trial when you hear all of the admissible evidence and then you can make an informed decision on innocence or guilt.

Because when a human being's life and liberty are at stake, snap judgments cannot rule the day.

Because know this, a vast majority of cases never go to trial. They are pled out prior to trial.

What that means is that if a case makes it all the way to trial, that the facts and evidence are in dispute and we as a society owe it to the victims, their families and yes, to the defendants,

to base our opinion of guilt or innocence not on anything other than the evidence that is presented at trial.

Because that is the only shot that we have to make sure that justice is served.

...