CRIMINAL DEFENSE IN ST CHARLES COUNTY MO
St. Charles County, Missouri is a very conservative area of the state. Year after year, voters elect politicians who express “Let’s get tough on crime” slogans. This has resulted in a number of consequences for those who are criminally charged within this jurisdiction.
But this is exactly why it is so terribly important to have an expert-level St Charles Missouri criminal defense lawyer on your side. At The People’s Counsel, our legal team has handled hundreds of cases in St Charles MO county and city. With each one of these prior cases, we have devoted the necessary time and effort to get a positive result.
For instance, our St Charles MO criminal defense attorney will request any and all evidence that the prosecutor and/or police have collected against you. This will normally consist of the police report (which is a document written by the arresting officer that tends to slant favorably to the prosecutor’s side), or any other documentary evidence pertinent to your case (such as photographs and/or a description of items that might have been confiscated during your interaction with the police).
YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ARE VITALLY IMPORTANT AFTER BEING CHARGED WITH A CRIME IN ST CHARLES MO
It is normally at this stage of the process that our criminal defense team might find mistakes that were made by the police (from the moment that you first came into contact with the officer, to the handling of your paperwork, to the way in which the officer conducted a search and/or seizure of you or your personal items). If the officer performed his/her duties in a manner that violated your Constitutional rights, then our team will express this concern to the court, and ask that the charges leveled against you be dismissed.
Of course, not every St Charles MO criminal charge is going to result in a dismissal. If it turns out that requesting a dismissal is not the best strategy, then The People’s Counsel will work very closely with the local prosecutor to see if the charges can be amended. Having developed a very good working relationship with the courts in St Charles, we are very often able to convince the prosecutor to recommend that the charges be reduced to a lesser infraction.
So for instance, let’s say you have been charged with felony possession of drugs. In this kind of situation, our St Charles Missouri criminal defense attorney will seek to have the charges reduced down to a lesser offense (so that the impact on your future is minimal). If this strategy is not acceptable to the prosecutor (as mentioned above, St Charles MO is a very conservative place), then it might be possible to get your charges suspended altogether. When the judge suspends your sentence (of possible jail time and/or fine), he/she will place you on a probation.
This is referred to as an “SIS” (or Suspended Imposition of Sentence), in which you will be monitored by the court for a specified period of time (usually lasting one to two years in length). An SIS, therefore, does not come with any jail time or fine. So long as you make it through the probationary period without incurring new run-ins with the law, then the original charge of drug possession will not show up on your permanent record.
As you can clearly see, the main goal of your St Charles Missouri criminal defense team is to minimize the negative consequences that can come from criminal charges. But unfortunately, most people do not ever contact an attorney to help them. Instead, they decide to roll the dice, and represent themselves.
OUR ST CHARLES MISSOURI CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYERS HAVE REPRESENTED HUNDREDS OF CLIENTS IN ST CHARLES COUNTY
Although you certainly have the right to serve as your own lawyer (referred to as “pro se” in the criminal justice system), you should know that this kind of scenario almost always ends up the same way: people who represent themselves often do nothing more than plead guilty to the charges.
Why would someone simply plead guilty to a criminal charge? This is question that has no easy answer (indeed, it has become the subject of several documentary films in recent years). “Pro se” defendants usually have no legal education, and are therefore unfamiliar with how criminal courts work or function. And when a person with no legal background is faced with an incredibly complex set of rules, regulations, and laws, that person will usually opt for a quick admission of guilt.
But if you do plead guilty, that original charge of drug possession will wind up on your permanent record as a criminal conviction. This negative remark will have dire consequences for many, many years to come. For example, most employers now run criminal background checks on all potential employees. So if there is a job for which you qualify (and in all other respects would blow away the competition), you will very likely be eliminated as a candidate once the background check is run. The same idea would apply to those situations in which you try to rent an apartment, check into a hotel, take out a business loan, or request financial help with college.
Instead of dealing with the uncertainly described above, you should contact us today! Our legal defense team is ready to start working on your case immediately. All you have to do is give us a call, shoot us an email, or fill out an online form. We look forward to hearing from you!!