Patrick M. Lewis Criminal Defense Lawyer
Call us at: 913-558-3961
What to expect when you have been accused of a crime
The criminal justice system is a strange and scary place, especially if you have never had experience with it before. There are certain things you should know in order to make your time
with the courts calmer and the outcome more favorable.
The first thing to know is that the system is not what most people would consider fair. This does not mean that you cannot receive a fair trial, you most certainly can, but it will not feel like you are being treated as though you are presumed innocent. You need the help of an experienced criminal defense lawyer.
Interested in learning more?
A Side Note on "Experience"
If you look around the internet you will find many, many lawyers who describe themselves as "experienced." However if you look more closely you will see that they have been out of law school for only a year or two. How much experience have they gained in that short time period? Law school, unfortunately, does not prepare a person to walk into court and try a criminal case. Law school classes are varied, including civil pleadings, wills, tax issues, water rights and all manner of interesting topics. Interesting, but useless to defending a client charged with a crime.
Ask a potential lawyer about the number of trials they have taken to verdict. Ask how many were jury trials and how many were bench trials? How many were felonies and how many were misdemeanors? It is not important that all of those trials be in the same type of criminal charge you are facing. It is important that they have picked many juries and heard many verdicts. Patrick Lewis has that experience. Patrick has tried well over fifty felony jury trials.
Not all experience is equal. Many attorneys join prosecutor's offices right out of law school. They will spend a lot of time in a courtroom. However they generally have been given marching orders by their superiors. They do not have to exercise discretion. Juries will tend to accept what they say because, regardless of what we are told, juries believe almost all defendants are guilty. Juries want to believe police officers. It takes long years of experience defending people from the power of the government to be able to get jurors to step back from their assumptions and really look at the facts of a case.
Patrick's experience is in defending people.
That is the experience you need.
