In a recent case in Washington, DC an important lesson was learned that should be of interest to people awaiting trial in multi-defendant cases. The defendants acted and negotiated as a group and as a result were successful in their defense. In most multi-defendant cases each defendant goes his or her own way, and that only plays into the prosecutors’ hands. It breaks up the only strength the defendants have: their numbers.
The defendants in the D.C. case were accused of exporting thousands of kilos of cocaine into the United States. Together, nine defendants decided they would either plead guilty as a whole or go to trial as a whole. The prosecutor, faced with trying all nine defendants, was willing to negotiate if he could obtain pleas of guilty from every defendant. This was exactly what the defendants had hoped for.
No prosecutor wants to combat nine defense lawyers making motions on behalf of each defendant. No judge wants to try a case for several months. The prosecution does not want to summon law enforcement officers and informants from Colombia and elsewhere, providing for their transportation, expenses and housing. The Marshals service does not want to provide the number of marshals necessary to guard nine defendants every day, while enlisting other marshals to keep watch for suspicious spectators and guard the exits and entrances to the court room. That would require additional marshals from neighboring districts to simply deal with defendants in other cases in the courthouse. The money and personnel involved would be astronomical, and the inconvenience would be enormous.
This is the leverage that defendants acting together have. Each plea bargain the prosecutor obtains weakens the group dynamic and the defendants’ bargaining power. The more pleas the government acquires, the more it benefits. It is far easier to try one or two defendants than the original fourteen extradited to the United States.
As a result of their unity, the government offered the defendants a sixty month sentence for the importation of “thousands of kilos of cocaine” with the added opportunity for the defendants to ask for a reduction. The defendants had already been incarcerated for close to two years in Combita (the Colombian prison) and Washington, D.C. and were only looking at roughly another 20 months, some even less, because they stuck together. In unity there really is strength.
The unified group mostly received 54 month sentences with two or three defendants receiving four year sentences. These defendants now know that they are going to be back with their families soon, to attend graduations and weddings, and to play with their children and grandchildren.
As the founding fathers of the United States said, “We either stand together or hang separately.” Prosecutors like nothing more than division among defendants, so stay unified.