Helen Saulnier 
by Jamison Koehler on August 19, 2022
Individuals utilized to occur in for their original interview at the Philadelphia general public defender’s office environment in a panic: “I am so frightened of going to jail,” they would say in advance of we were even seated. “I will do anything at all, anything at all at all, if you can just reduce me from serving any time.”
These types of fears were usually avoidable. Perhaps the human being was a initially-time offender. Maybe he/she was charged with a minor misdemeanor. In individuals instances you could re-guarantee the shopper that, even in the worst situation circumstance in which the scenario went to demo and the client was observed responsible, it was continue to not likely he/she would be sentenced to everything additional than probation.
Thus re-assured, the shopper also re-assessed. But I have children, the shopper stated. Or I have a career. I simply cannot be stressing about coming into the metropolis to see a probation officer.
In other text, above the program of a 30-moment job interview, the client would have gone from “please no jail time, I will do anything” to “my daily life is also fast paced to be bothered with probation.” This is truly unfair. Is that the finest you can do for me?
That is how rapidly shopper anticipations can modify.
A large element of our career is to handle these anticipations. Specifically, we need to have to make confident these expectations are each knowledgeable and sensible.
I generally start communications with a shopper with a dialogue of demo approach: How can we beat this situation? This places the emphasis in which it need to be: fighting vs . surrendering. It also indicators to the consumer that I am on his/her side.
When I go out to the jail to see a consumer, I ordinarily convey together my laptop so we can alongside one another critique the human body worn camera (BWC) documents, any surveillance recordings, and many others.
While seeing the witness’s statements to law enforcement, for illustration, I will stage out potential inconsistencies and other weaknesses. I could also point out complications with the way the job interview was carried out.
But I have to be mindful not to oversell the energy of our opportunity defense. For instance, that law enforcement officers interviewed witnesses in the existence of other witnesses, thus perhaps contaminating their testimony, is a attainable spot of cross-examination that may well or could not resonate with the jury.
But that, in and of by itself, will not confirm deadly to the government’s scenario. It is doable that, inspite of these complications, the jury will even now feel the testimony.
It is a delicate harmony. On the a single hand, we simply cannot be way too optimistic. We do not want to give the client unrealistic anticipations about the odds of prevailing at trial. At the exact same time, we do not want to current too grim a image possibly.
I have issues any time a shopper asks me for my advice. You are the attorney, they say. What do you believe?
In those scenarios, I discover myself utilizing –reluctantly — that most lawyerly of phrases: It is dependent.
This is your daily life, I react. I can only lay out the possibilities – the execs and drawbacks – for you to decide what is greatest for you.
