BTW, it is understandable why innocent men do not go to trial, but instead elect to sign a plea with the prosecutor.

Going to trial carries too much risk.

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My LO wanted to go to trial (*before* I joined this community) because they wouldn't show him the evidence against him. After he finally accepted a plea the judge openly said he was "throwing the book at him for wasting the courts time with this nonsense about a trial"

But taking a plea on charges that you claim innocence on is not only devastating to you but to the family that you love. The system is screwed up. They won't let him be with our boys taking that label. :(

Prosecutors have unfettered discretion and power to charge as many lesser included crimes as they want then get you to plead down to whatever they want you to plead down to. In theory the judge doesn't have to follow the recommendation, but how often does that not happen?

I think a good law would be not allowing a judge to make the sentence any tougher than what they agreed upon by the defense and prosecutor. The judge could make the sentence more lenient but not more harsh. How messed up is it that you can plead down and the judge can still dish out max punishment? That's how crazy our system is.

And, sometimes, depending upon your age, the plea offer is so bad that you might as well go to trial.

That's true, Deena.

Lately I have noticed a disturbing trend in that DAs offer a terrible plea deal-----maybe 25 or 30 years-----and if the defendant does not like it, he can go to trial and face the possibility of receiving 60 or 100 years at trial.

I have even seen cases in which the DA refused to offer a plea deal, forcing the defendant to go to trial. The DA knows that the defendant cannot win at the trial stage, so the defendant will never see the outside of the prison again.

They almost dare the defendant to go to trial.

Yes, they are really playing hard ball here.

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The problem is it becomes very hard to compare cases because it can depend on state, the judge, the jurors, how much time has passed, and a host of other variables.

There was a case in MA recently where a teen girl ran around on adult websites looking for married couples to have threesomes with. She snared a bunch of couples and they went to trial with the evidence stacked against the defendants AND the teen voluntarily testified in all the cases. The juries all came back with not guilty pleas in all the cases. Juries can be a finicky bunch.

My case was supposed to be all easy peasy and has slowly gone downhill. I know they elicited a testimony from my best friend by revealing details of the case to him which is technically unethical and witness tampering under federal guidelines.

Everyone and their mother said it was going to be no prison time. Now all of a sudden there's an "ick factor" and the judge and da want prison time. Yet the teen does not want to testify at all, period. We should get our first offer on Thursday and go from there.

I would also add that with these cases the charges are much more heinous and numerous than most of the people here in this little community. Makes it a bit harder to compare as well.

That was the case with us Deena. The plea deal wasn't any better than the max amount he could receive, and listened to what daughter wanted was off the table.

Lilly, referring to your son's judge, you said he said this, " After he finally accepted a plea the judge openly said he was "throwing the book at him for wasting the courts time with this nonsense about a trial"

So a trial is "nonsense?" And requesting a trial is "wasting" the court's time??? I don't even know what to say.

This judge needs to be impeached. I guess he has never read closely the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution-------or maybe he thinks sex offenders do not deserve the constitutional protections the rest of the people have.

Here is the Sixth Amendment----

""""" In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."""""

The wording here is pretty straight forward. I don't know what is so difficult understanding and applying it in his court.

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We took the gamble cos we had evidence that showed my step-daughter was lying. Unfortunately, the DA was able to keep most of it out. However, we did get a few things in, including a statement by the other detective on our small police force, that contradicted the detective on my husband's case, and some info pertaining to motive as to why she'd lied. The PD also picked the brain of a jury consultant.
All of this got my husband a hung jury. My husband then took a plea, to a misdemeaner, that he's still innocent of, but this way he only got 3 months in jail vs. What he could have got. He was supposed to only have 10 yrs on the registry, but that changed with the adoption of the AWA.

Faery, have you thought about fighting the constitutionality of his registry due to AWA? After listening to the speakers at the RSOL conference, it sounds as if many attorney's are looking for the right cases to fight the constitutionality of his time on the registry changing after his plea. If you have, talk to your state's RSOL or contact national to see if they can direct you to an attorney. Sounds like there are ACLU and public defenders also looking to attack the putative nature of these laws.

My son took the plea. At sentencing the prosecutor twisted the facts and made my son look really bad. If it had gone to trial I could then see the prosecutor lying there as well. Glad we took the plea.

We had a prosecutor that wouldn't budge at all....for three and a half years. She ended on maternity leave (obviously someone who should be handling a case like this).....the new male prosecutor immediately said "this is a bum deal and here's what I can offer"...we went from her offering a 15 year "deal" to a 4.5 to 5.2 year deal (this is federal...so that less 15%). Hardly seems like a deal, but compared to the 25 to 40 that she was originally promising if it went to trial with stacked sentences I guess in a way it is. Plus our attorney pointed out that in order for there to be any chance of winning on CP you would have to have at least someone on the jury say that they had downloaded porn (in mixed company) which is unlikely to happen and that they HAD accidentally seen CP themselves (which is NEVER going to happen because they would be admitting a crime) and then they would have to fight the others "disgust factor" and unwillingness to risk that they are wrong and that a child may be hurt in the future. The more I thought about the more I realized he was right...it's a nearly impossible battle! They'll get to show the pictures, there can be NO mention that they were already deleted when other adult pictures and videos were intentionally saved. No mention that they were a very negligible amount of the pictures and no mention that none of the searches were anything indicating looking for CP nor that he had never been to a site that they were aware of active trading going on. All of that is "not important because it doesn't draw from the fact that it WAS on the computer" ohhhh and my favorite saying that's been stated over and over by judges (we're on the third one now) and prosecutors "There's no room in the law for whether it was intentional or not, only that you were aware that it was there". Shouldn't the fact that you immediately deleted it say that you were NOT looking for it? Didn't our forefathers intend for our laws to be fair and just? Not according to the current legal system. The current legal system says "possession" is one charge and "receipt" is another...in my mind you cannot do one without somehow doing the other...which makes a legal loophole to force the prosecutor to nearly never go to trial and if they do have to actually prepare a trial they can nearly never lose entirely!!

(sorry for the rant.....way too close to home at the moment)

Thanks Thought, Id have to contact national cos my state's Rsol is non existant