Get a Better Plea Deal or Lesser Sentence

Answer:

One thing that’s always required regarding criminal cases, and that every attorney is literally duty bound to do so, is to really make an accurate and an honest assessment, have a genuine conversation with a defendant regarding the exposure of the case and what the potential outcomes could be. There will be plea deals in most cases that will be offered by the state, by the prosecution, the government, whether you’re at the federal level, the state level, tribal, municipal level. There’ll be plea deals that’ll be offered, or at some point, it could be that the case has been tried or the person has pled guilt on some charge, and then you have to go before the judge for sentencing.

What can you do to get a better plea deal, or what can you do to get the lesser sentence? These are what we call in the legal field either mitigations as it relates to sentences or deviations as it relates to plea offers that are given by a prosecutor, again, mitigations or deviations Let’s talk about deviations briefly first. Deviation is a request that’s sent to a prosecutor to request that the state deviate from a suggested plea or an offered plea or oftentimes to deviate from charges that have been filed against a potential defendant. We submit a deviation request to that prosecutor saying hey, we think based on what we see with the evidence and about this particular person that you’re charging that maybe you shouldn’t be that harsh. Maybe you should deviate, and we’re asking that you consider this.

On the other hand, if you get to a sentencing with a judge and you’ve already been convicted either because of trial or you’ve pled guilty to something, then you want to submit evidence to the judge asking the judge to mitigate the sentence. Again, like in Arizona, there’s a presumptive sentence, and you can request the judge mitigate the sentence or ask for the minimum sentence. You want to submit evidence, facts, testimonial evidence from family members, letters and whatnot so that the sentence is mitigated and not aggravated where they add more time to it.

What we do with our clients is we sit down and we have a huge packet of information that we fill out with them. We call it a mitigation deviation questionnaire. Cooperate with the attorney. We gather information about your family history, your educational history, your work history, any gang affiliation in the past, drug usage or alcohol usage, your love, your social relationships, your children, your mental health history, your medical history, how you did in high school, what are your future plans, etc.

We pile all of this stuff together, we give this information in a comprehensive manner to the judge or the prosecutor, and we request that they either deviate from those charges or lessen that plea. If we’re at a sentencing hearing we say to the judge, “Your honor, we know what the prosecutor’s recommending, but we think that the sentence should be mitigated and a lesser sentence should be given.” It’s important that you and your family cooperate with your attorney. Be very vocal about it, and be very honest about it, so that these sentences could be potentially mitigated or a deviation from the requested plea offer. Talk with you attorney. Call our office. We’ll go through the process with you so we’ll see if we can get the best possible outcome for you, for your family.