Question: What is the best way to negotiate a drug mule case if the defendant in the case has no prior criminal record and has cooperated with the police?
Answer: The best decision depends on the evidence against the defendant, the court the defendant is in and the judge the defendant is before. Couriers have no real defense. They have no rights at the frontier and can be searched without reason. It is the right of every country to protect its borders.
Question: With the Federal Guidelines in mind, what do you think would be the best defense for a youth who lacks resolve and whose case is in the hands of a Federal Public Defender? How credible are these people—who are paid by the government and basically work for it—when they advise the defendant to plead guilty? What would be the best course of action in such a case? We appreciate your advice, as we are not in a position to hire a private attorney specialized in this area such as yourself.
Answer: Their credibility is rock solid. Their competence is as variable as in any profession. It depends on the lawyer. But in New York the Federal Defenders are top drawer, incredibly competent and uniformly so. And because they get paid whether a defendant likes them or not, they can literally “afford” to be honest and sincere. In New York it is an honor and highly competitive to be a Federal Defender.
The one danger in belonging to any organization is that the longer you are there, the more institutionalized you become and the less likely you are to be enthused. After all, how many courier or pornography cases can you take before you become bored of them? But the notion of a Federal Defender selling someone out is, in my opinion, ridiculous. You have a better chance of being sold out by a private lawyer, although even that is rare.
However, private lawyers who are assigned by a judge pursuant to the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) may have other cases with paying clients that demand their attention. A private attorney has the problem of keeping his or her practice afloat. Many criminal defense attorneys are sole practitioners, constantly traveling from one court to another. It is a taxing life without a lot of time to reflect and focus on one case. CJA lawyers are paid relatively well, by the hour, but are paid at the END of a case, not at the start. And they have to file vouchers listing all their hours and expenses, item by item. Criminal defense lawyers are notoriously bad at keeping records. That being said, many CJA lawyers are very competent, very experienced and very dedicated. It is just that they have other interests and other concerns, all of which are understandable, that the Federal Defenders do not have.
The fact that the Federal Defenders are paid by the government means absolutely nothing. It would not even occur to these defenders to favor the government. Judges too, get paid by the government but no one has ever suggested that they are beholden to the government because of that.
You can trust a Federal Public Defender. And if he or she is competent as well, most are, you have won the raffle. Federal Defenders just may not have the proper bedside manners when they tell you, you have legal cancer. But that does not change the correctness of the diagnosis or the resolution of the problem.
If a federal defender recommends you take a plea, he or she is being sincere. A lawyer may urge you to take a plea of guilty in a close case where the outcome could go either way. The irony is that there are litigators who are actually scared of litigating. A lawyer that has never lost a trial is not necessarily a great lawyer. It may just mean that he or she only goes to trial on cases that are overwhelmingly easy to win. Lawyers who have lost a number of cases may be better. They may have lost trials because they took harder cases where the chances of winning were slim. What you want is a lawyer who is not afraid to fight it out, but also knows when to plead it out. Just remember, the most important ingredient a lawyer can possess is experience, and federal defenders have that in spades.
DavidZapp