Florida Legal Article:
Attorney lawyer criminal defense Naples Florida
In Naples, Florida, a criminal defense attorney (or lawyer) can prove invaluable for defendants accused of committing a crime--either elsewhere, or actually in Naples, Florida. Criminal attorneys (or lawyers) have both the education and experience to represent their clients during all phases of the criminal process. Still, defendants should have a basic understanding of how the process works, as well.
After the police make an arrest, they send an arrest report to the prosecutor, who then decides whether or not to prosecute the criminal case. Arrest reports contain summaries of the events that lead to the arrest, along with other basic details like dates, time, location, and witness information. They can often include the information for whatever Naples, Florida criminal defense attorney (or lawyer) is representing the defendant.
Prosecutors who decide to initiate criminal proceedings can either file charges relating to all crimes that the police suspect a defendant committed, or they can choose to file charges for either more or less severe crimes than the charges leveled by the police in Naples, Florida. Criminal defense attorneys (or lawyers) will then need to be involved at every step of the process in order to adequately defend their clients.
As criminal defense attorneys (or lawyers) in both Naples and Florida at large will advise their clients, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that both indigent defendants represented by public defendants and those defendants who hire their own attorneys are entitled to adequate representation. This means that a resident of Naples, Florida whose criminal defense attorney (or lawyer) fails to do a reasonably good job of defending him or her may later have cause for a new trial.
Of course, this doesn't mean that defendants are guaranteed to representation by a perfect criminal defense attorney (or lawyer) in Naples, Florida. The circumstances of the attorney's representation must be sufficiently shocking to justify throwing out the guilty verdict due to an attorney's incompetence. Here are some examples that judges have found to justify reversing a guilty verdict:
- An attorney putting a law student intern in charge of the defense and then leaving the courtroom during defense proceedings;
- An attorney acknowledging that the defendant was guilty of a lesser crime during closing argument--without first obtaining the defendant's approval of this tactic, and
- An attorney's failure to challenge two potential jurors who said they would be negatively impacted if defendant failed to testify.