Public Defender Investigator Network

When a potential client calls our firm and tells us that they are charged with a criminal offense, one the first things we generally ask them is whether they are charged in state or federal court. There have been several instances where we have represented two individuals at the same time who are charged with similar offenses but one has been charged in federal court and one has been charged in state court. Indeed, this has happened several times where we have simultaneously been representing two individuals charged with drug offenses but one is charged in state court and one is charged in federal court. It also happened very recently where we simultaneously represented a defendant charged with a child pornography offense in state court and also represented a defendant (actually he was the spouse of an FBI agent) charged with a child pornography offense in federal cour Read more…

The Department of Corrections is part of a criminal justice system that includes hundreds of city, county, state and federal agencies. They include:

• Police Departments
• Sheriff’s Departments
• Prosecutors
• Defense Attorneys
• Superior Courts
• County Jails
• State Prisons

Most criminal acts are never handled through the criminal justice process because they are not reported. In 200 Read more…

Overview

Every saint has a past and every sinner a future. Criminal law takes cognizance of this universal truth and every accused is provided with ample rights while deciding whether he/she has committed any offence. Prosecution guidelines provide for certain procedural niceties to be extended to a person accused of crime. After all, the law intends to punish the crime, not the criminal. Adversarial system views crime as a wrongdoing against the state and not against a particular person. The interests of the state are represented by the prosecuting attorney. As such, law views the offender sympathetically and treats him/her as innocent until proved guilty and passes the burden of proving the case to the prosecution. The defendant has a right to be presumed innocent unless and until the State has proven each and every element of the c Read more…

Man is a prey to his emotions and untoward situation which many times come to him without a prior notice. He is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune which sometimes cause bad things happen to good people. No criminal is by birth a criminal but it is the circumstances which make him do so. There is a range of biological, psychological, and social causes that affect human behavior. There are many situations under which a person can do things that could be considered as crime. They can do an act or behavior that could violate or breach any rule of political, moral or criminal laws subjected to punishment or public prosecution.

However the law is all essential to maintain peace and order in the society, this is the law that sometimes punishes innocent people only because of this that the accused people find themselves unable to prove their innocence; Read more…