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I am not looking for judgement here......We are a good family with a child who has made bad decisions....several to be exact.....We believe that he can be rehabilitated.....We are not ENABLERS.......enough said.......would u go with a public defendant or private........we're leaning towards public because of the cost of a private attorney.......any suggestions, advice, etc......Though no parenting lectures please unless u can walk in my shoes....
I am not looking for judgement here......We are a good family with a child who has made bad decisions....several to be exact.....We believe that he can be rehabilitated.....We are not ENABLERS.......enough said.......would u go with a public defendant or private........we're leaning towards public because of the cost of a private attorney.......any suggestions, advice, etc......Though no parenting lectures please unless u can walk in my shoes....
Depending on how serious the crime is if you'd want a court appointed attorney or now. A first time offender for a DUI or something, not a big deal.
Is your "child" a minor? Public defenders are assigned for those who cannot afford their own lawyer; if your child is a minor living with you, it's based on your income. If not, it's based on his income. If you, or he, don't qualify for a public defender, you don't have a choice.
I have known some Public Defenders, and--for the most part--they are dedicated folks who try their best on behalf of their clients.
The problem with using a Public Defender is twofold--they tend to have incredibly high client loads, and they tend to have less paralegal assistance than those in private practice. And, unfortunately, some Public Defenders are not very dedicated to their task. You will not know beforehand which one you are getting, and you cannot choose your Public Defender. You might luck-out, or...
You seem like an intelligent person, so I want you to think about the difference between an attorney who has--literally--just 10 minutes to review the case prior to court vs one who might take many hours preparing his case. Think about the difference between an attorney who does not have the luxury of having a paralegal staff to do extensive research on the various legal issues involved in the case, vs one who has copious print-outs of relevant case law to rely on for his legal arguments.
If you can hire a private criminal defense attorney without taking food off of your table, I would suggest that you do so.
And--despite your admonition that you don't want parenting advice--I also suggest that you come to an agreement with your son regarding how he will repay you for his attorney's fees.
People do not truly value things that they get for free, so it is important for him to "buy into" the seriousness of this situation by agreeing to shoulder the costs at whatever point he is able to do so. Otherwise, he may not be a good candidate for rehabilitation.
I'll echo the "you get what you pay for" statement. I think it is only in your son's best interest to hire the best private attorney possible and preferably one with extensive experience in your particular situation. Nothing against public defenders, but I wouldn't use one unless I had absolutely no other choice. Just remember that good attorney's are going to charge you for a consult unless you retain them, so try to do as much leg work as you can and pick the right one from the start.
from what i have seen with public defenders, they just want to move things along and will try to plead things down to a lesser offense and get your child to agree to do that. i would say if you want to have your child be found not guilty, hire a private lawyer. if there is a possibility of serious jail time, hire a private lawyer. if its a relatively minor offense and you dont mind your child having a minor guilty offense on his record, then go with the public defender. you wont be getting much.
It's really an up in the air thing on how it can go, and severity of the offense surely plays into if it's worth it or not. Here's an example of a situation I found myself in a few years back where the public defender ended up as the hero.
At the time, my career was a dream come true. I was in a full time touring band, I got to play guitar for a JOB. We toured in a 15 passenger Ford van, this newest one we can recently purchased from another band we were friends with. When home in between tours, we lived together and would often use the van just to get around if a bunch of us were going to same place. One day while driving from Morristown down 510/24 in Mendham, and got pulled over for doing 49 in a 45.
The cop did his typical bored small town cop thing and we just waited for him to finish up and send us off with our ticket, until he asked our drummer who was driving, to step out of the vehicle. He gets back in, and the cop opens the side door and tells us all to exit the van. There was a total of six of us in the van, 3 band members, our bassist's girlfriend and two of our tour crew. Multiple backup units arrived, they searched the van, brought in the drug sniffer dogs and recovered what they determined to be two marijuana stems. All six of us were arrested, right there and taken to the station to be booked. All six of us, charged with possession with the intent to use, for two stems.
When it came time for the court date, all of us pleaded not guilty because none of us smoke weed, so why would we? Some of us hired private lawyers, some went with public defenders. As luck had it, one of the public defenders was friendly with the prosecutor. They spoke about the absurdness of the situation and what a waste of everyone's time and money it was, and worked out a deal. All we had to do was not get arrested for drugs for six months and it'd be expunged from our records entirely.
Hope everything works out whichever choice you end up making.
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