Secrets That Could Make Your Criminal Charges Go Away

If so, there are some little-known programs and strategies in Georgia that could make your criminal charges disappear. These strategies require that you retain a criminal defense attorney. The following strategies may not apply in every case or in every situation, but you can call our law firm at 770-627-3221 for free and find out which program may be right in your legal matter. 

Georgia's Pretrial Diversion Program

First-time offenders in Georgia might be eligible to participate in a county-sponsored Georgia Pretrial Diversion Program. If a first-time offender is eligible and completes the program satisfactorily, the offender may avoid criminal prosecution and a potential criminal conviction. This program will also keep the offender's criminal record clean. 

To see if you are eligible for a Georgia Pretrial Diversion Program, you must speak to and retain an attorney before you accept a plea deal and before the start of your criminal trial. If you or your loved one are a first-time offender, a pretrial diversion program in Georgia may be the best option for you or your loved one since having a criminal record will have a disastrous impact on your life and livelihood. A criminal record can affect you or your loved one's ability to secure housing, receive student loans, affect employment status and disqualify you or your loved one from receiving government assistance. As previously mentioned, first-time offenders who qualify and complete a pretrial diversion program in Georgia may be able to avoid a criminal trial and keep a criminal conviction off of their criminal record.

Georgia's First Offender Act

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Should I Retain a Private Criminal Defense Attorney or Trust the Public Defender?

As aforementioned, retaining a highly respected criminal defense attorney can positively impact the disposition of your criminal case. Whether that outcome is a dismissal, lesser or fewer charges, more lenient sentencing, or an acquittal after trial, your attorney's skill, experience, and resources can have a significant impact on the outcome of your misdemeanor or felony prosecution. Although a public defender or court-appointed attorney can be just as skilled and experienced as a private attorney, limits on funding can mean extremely large caseloads and limited resources. In this article, we take a quick look at these different types of criminal defense attorneys and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each.

By way of background, most school children learn that the Sixth Amendment provides a right to assistance of counsel. However, fewer people understand the contours or history of this important protection. The Sixth Amendment provides in pertinent part that "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the right to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." 

Until fairly recently, this right was interpreted narrowly to safeguard the right of an accused to bring an attorney to court if one had been retained. This narrow interpretation meant many poor defendants faced an experienced prosecutor without the benefit of legal counsel. However, this right became powerful protection for the criminally accused when the Supreme Court expanded the scope of this guarantee by making the right to be represented by counsel a requirement of due process. A series of cases mandated that state and federal jurisdictions make counsel available to the poor.

These important Sixth Amendment decisions spurred various approaches for state and federal jurisdictions to fulfill this guarantee. At the federal level and in many large metro jurisdictions, government-funded public defenders represent poor defendants. In other jurisdictions, attorneys represent poor defendants on a case-by-case basis or pursuant to a contract with their law firm to represent indigent defendants.

According to a study published in 2014 in American Law and Economics Review, entitled "Indigent Defense Counsel, Attorney, Quality, and Dependent Outcomes," researchers reported strong evidence that the quality of a defendant's attorney can dramatically impact the outcome of the criminal prosecution. The study focused on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics involving felonies in large metro areas. The researchers examined outcomes in cases involving public defenders and court-appointed counsel. The researchers determined based on nationwide data that statistically, public defenders significantly outperformed court-appointed counsel. This disparity holds for such diverse aspects of a case as the likelihood of a conviction of the most serious criminal charge, speed of disposition of a case, and sentence duration. 

The researchers posit that disparities between local economies, funding, and compensation might explain the divergent success rates. While public defenders typically work at their craft full-time, appointed counsel often does not defend poor defendants in criminal cases on a full-time basis. According to the researchers, court-appointed attorneys usually are paid on a per-case basis rather than a regular salary or hourly wage; this too might partially explain the disparity. The fee structure also might create a disincentive to high-quality criminal defense attorneys to accept court-appointed cases. Limited funds mean that skilled criminal attorneys who could take such appointments might be attracted away by more lucrative work. Certain jurisdictions use a combination of these approaches to serve indigent defendants. 

While the 2014 study did not address the difference in outcome between private attorneys and public options, other studies had looked at this question. The data is inconclusive because several studies have found that clients of private defense counsel fair more favorably and report higher levels of satisfaction with their representation. In contrast, other studies have found that outcomes tend to be similar regardless of whether a private or public attorney represents the accused. 

While an exhaustive review of these studies is beyond the scope of this article, we have provided a few prominent examples. One of the first studies to look at this question was published in the Arkansas Law Review in 1971 by M. Gitleman. The study concluded that poor defendants with appointed counsel were less likely to receive a suspended sentence, dismissal, or probation than poor defendants that hired private attorneys. A more recent 2005 study published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law found that private defense attorneys obtain lesser sentences than appointed counsel or public defenders. 

While a 1975 study, published in the American Journal of Criminal Law, did not find much difference in sentencing or conviction rates between clients represented by a public defender and those represented by a private attorney, it found drastic differences in workload. The author speculates that any difference in conviction rates and/or client satisfaction could be linked directly to this difference in the number of cases handled by private and public attorneys. A book published in 2017 that analyzes weaknesses in the public defense system expressly concludes that this difference in caseload might be the reason private attorneys, on average, have lower conviction rates. 

Despite the muddled empirical evidence, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to relying on a public defender or court-appointed attorney as opposed to a private attorney. Cost constitutes the obvious appeal of a public defender or appointed attorney. By contrast, retention of a private attorney can amount to a significant financial investment, but you can interview, screen, and select the best attorney for you rather than rely on the luck of the draw. Communication also can be easier with a private attorney because of a typically lighter caseload.