How about criminal law for a change?
This is a case I did today unrelated to auto, slip and fall, workers comp or worksite injury cases:
Let me 1st ask you a ?
If you have a very short opportunity to get your best point across to the sentencing Judge how do you do it?
Answer: Put the only piece of positive evidence you have at the TOP of the papers you hand the Judge.
There is so much going on during a criminal sentencing that it is possible the best evidence you have for your client can be swept aside or minimized by the Judge UNLESS that is the 1st thing he sees.
Because it might very well set the tone for the whole sentencing proceeding.
Instead of the judge focusing on how the client screwed up by selling drugs, maybe the consideration becomes what the client has done to deal with his or her addiction.
Here is what I mean.
Today I was representing a 22-year-old female who plead guilty to selling heroin.
The sentencing guidelines called for serious jail time.
When our case was called, I handed the presentence report the sentencing guideline report and the post sentencing waiver to the Judge.
I knew the Judge wouldnt have time to read all that stuff in open court with a packed Courtroom.
So what do you do in that situation to best help your client?
I put the 1 page drug treatment certificate my client completed at the TOP of the papers I handed the Judge.
My hope was the Judge would at least look at the top page of the papers I handed him in Court.
It worked because the Judge never mentioned all the negative things that were contained in the Presentence report that he read weeks before.
My client got credit for time served and walked out of there a free woman!
It wasn’t rocket science, but it did work. lol
Bernie Tully