In the past couple of weeks I have had a few mothers tell me that their sons---who have multiple counts arising from a sex offenser----wants to go to trial.  Going to trial with the political atmosphere we now have in this country is a huge roll of the dice and can backfire.

I have written two commentaries about plea bargains and going to trial when there are multiple charges or counts involved.  I just want to share them with you, as I think it is important for the mothers, wives, GFs, and defendants themselves to understand the trial vs plea bargain situation.

Here is the first commentary-----

tinyurl.com/ybzfusd8

Prosecutors always try to act above board and as if they are honest in their dealings presenting cases. In fact, prosecutors are as dishonest as any profession I know and will do almost anything for a conviction, including convicting innocent people.

This article regarding plea deals presents a story favorable to prosecutors, but as I read the article I had to chuckle at how disingenuous prosecutors are.

Plea deals are successful partially b/c prosecutors choose to employ a form of “judicial blackmail”against a defendant. When they charge the accused, they will charge him with as many counts as possible, knowing full well that many of the counts will either get thrown out in the early stages of the investigation or at the preliminary hearing. In other words, they throw the proverbial kitchen sink at the accused and hope as many counts as possible will stick.

Why do they file charges that they know will not stick or will be thrown out? They want to scare the hell out of the defendant and his family in the early stages of the adjudication so he or she will be much more likely to negotiate a plea on HIS---the prosecutor’s--- terms.

And this tactic usually works.

With all the charges and counts, a defendant---even an innocent one---may be too scared to take his case to trial. If he is convicted at trial, given enough counts and if they are run consecutively by the judge at formal sentencing----the defendant may be looking at the better part of his life in prison. So he takes the safe route, which is pleading guilty.

Here are a couple of many examples when I was working in the law library in prison as a law clerk. A tutor friend of mine was charged with lewd acts in front of his children during a divorce proceeding. There was no physical contact, but the prosecutor made it clear that if he went to trial he would try him on each of the four counts and ask for 20 years on each count if found guilty. That is 80 years. But he told my friend that he could plea for 20 years, which he did. My friend did not have the resources or funds to hire a decent attorney, so he cooperated with the prosecutor even though he insisted that he was not guilty.

Another tutor, was charged with several counts of child-related offenses----molestation, rape, rape by instrumentation. He was offered a plea of five years by the DA, but he refused as he said he was innocent. He went to trial, was convicted, and given 70 years by a jury. He is still in prison in Oklahoma.

So the games the prosecutors play are not illegal, but they are somewhat questionable.

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BTW, the title of the article here is “A better deal': Plea agreements incentivize defendants to admit to crimes, keep the justice system moving.”

A more accurate title would have been “A better deal': Plea agreements incentivize SOMETIMES INNOCENT defendants to admit to crimes, keep the justice system moving.”

Here is the second one----

In all fairness, sometimes pleas are greatly advantageous to the defendant. Sometimes an offender is truly guilty of multiple crimes and/or multiple counts of the same crime. If he went to trial, he might receive several decades in prison, but the prosecutor will allow a plea, which will result in a manageable sentence, especially if he believes he has a shaky case or a complaining witness who might waffle on the stand and cause his case to implode.

In some child porn cases, the investigators will find hundreds of illicit images on the hard drive or phone of a defendant.  If the DA insisted on going to trial and refused to plea with the defendant, he most likely would be found on most of the counts and receive a lengthy prison sentence of a couple of decades at least.  At that point, the only other avenue for the defendant would be a blind plea in front of the judge or a "no contest" plea, which would bypass the DA and allow the judge to sentence the defendant.  This, too, is rather precarious, as judges can be hard asses during sentencing.

Instead, most DAs will either drop most of the counts or reduced some of the charges---and agree to run the charges concurrently----if the defendant pleads guilty via a negotiated plea.  This works in the defendant's favor as he will receive a sentence that is manageable.

Case in point. A tutor I worked with at the first medium security prison and his friend abducted a young lady at a convenience store, drove around the Oklahoma countryside all weekend while raping, sodomizing, and sexually assaulting her, went to trial and was convicted. He prevailed on appeal, was convicted on retrial, and then received something like 30,000 years from the jury.

tinyurl.com/ybnrcn4n

“A jury selected sentences for two convicted rapists Friday totaling 32,500 years in prison. One received 21,250 years and the other 11,250 - after they were resentenced for a 1993 attack on a Sand Springs woman.”

He was offered a plea for 20 years. While a 20 year plea is not ideal, Darren was a young man and he could have discharged that 20 years in less than 10 years and still lived part of his life outside a prison. As it is, he will never see the outside of a prison again and will die there.

He asked me to look at the court transcripts and possibly help him with his case. There was not much anyone could do with the case since he confessed and the young lady was such a convincing witness.

Of course, I was not at the trial and only read the transcripts, but I don ‘t think I have ever seen a female so traumatized by the crime. It took almost four days to get through her testimony as the judge had to keep calling recesses to allow the young lady to compose herself. Some of the things they did to her are too horrific to even mention here, but it was very bad.

The DA offered a plea since the young lady did not really want to testify and I think the DA feared he could not get her through the trial without a complete meltdown, which would have prevented a conviction.

The low point of the trial occurred when the young lady testified that she was a newlywed and had been married only a few months when the assaults took place.

I will bet that Darren now wishes he had taken the plea, so yes, pleas can work in the favor of the defendant.

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PS When I first read the case, I asked Darren why they had taken this young lady hostage and sexually assaulted her for several days.

His answer to me startled and shocked me. He said, “REW she wanted it.”