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Coronavirus and the Prisoner's Dilemma a criminal defense lawyer's take.

The Criminal Defense Process Part 1- Allegation of Criminal Conduct

The Criminal Defense Process Part 1- Allegation of a Criminal Conduct

Hello, my name is Brandan Davies. I am a criminal defense lawyer with the law firm Copley Roth & Davies here in Overland Park, Kansas. In this series of videos, I am going to be talking a little bit about the criminal defense process and basically walk you through a criminal defense case from start to finish. Now, the first part of every criminal case is that there has to be an allegation that a crime has been committed. This can be done through initial police contact, maybe a police officer witnesses a crime that has been committed, or it can be reported to the police by a witness, either someone calling 911 or calling the non-emergency line and reporting that a crime has been committed. Now this kicks off the investigation stage of a case. That’s what the police do and law enforcement does, is they investigate crimes and gather evidence. Now when a police officer goes out so they can gather evidence based on allegations of a crime, they might interview witnesses, take witness statements, they may go collect physical evidence if there is some sort of physical thing associated with the crime; maybe it’s broken glass or maybe it’s fingerprints or something like that, blood samples. Another part of the investigation will be obtaining a search warrant. In some cases, law enforcement may seek out a judge to get a search warrant to search a premises. These are all parts of the investigation stage of a case. Now, at this point, a criminal defense lawyer will have little involvement in the case because they don’t know that the case has even come about yet. And in some cases, the police will go out and investigate a crime and they will find that no crime has been committed or that there is not enough evidence to charge a person with a crime. At the conclusion of some investigations, the police will find that there isn’t enough evidence to find that a crime has been committed and the case will end right then. If the police do believe that a crime has been committed, then they will turn over their findings or their products of their investigation to the district attorney’s office or a city prosecutor, depending on what crime they believe has been committed. Now remember, the investigation stage is just the first process to any criminal case. If you’d like to find out more about criminal cases and how they progress, continue to watch these videos.

The Criminal Defense Process Part 2 -Charging the Defendant with a Crime

The Criminal Defense Process Part 2- Charging the Defendant with a Crime

Hello, my name is Brandan Davies. I am a criminal defense lawyer with the law firm Copley Roth & Davies here in Overland Park, Kansas. In this series of videos I am going to be walking you through a criminal defense case from start to finish. In this video we are going to be talking about the charging decision or when charges or going to be brought. Once the investigation stage is concluded, the police have done their investigation, they are going to turn over the products of their investigation to the prosecutor. Now, there is a couple of different prosecutors that they may turn that over to depending on the allegations or the crime they believe has been committed. It may be a city prosecutor or it may be a state prosecutor. This will be the first time that a lawyer gets to look at the product of the police investigation and start determining what they want to charge the person with, or what crime has been committed. Now, prosecutors have a very wide latitude of what they can decide to charge a person with based on the investigation. They have, what they call, prosecutorial discretion. After the prosecutor has looked at the fruits of the investigation, and determined what charges are appropriate for this person to be charged with, they will try to seek out an arrest warrant and contemporaneously file a complaint. That complaint will have listed out the charges which the prosecutor thinks that they can prove and they will seek to go get an arrest warrant from a judge. Now, remember that the prosecutor alone does not have the power to issue an arrest warrant. At this stage, the charging stage, a criminal defense lawyer is usually not involved because either the person does not know they are going to be charged with a crime, or does not know that their charges are forthcoming. For more information on the progress of a criminal defense case, please watch our next video about arrests.