Speaker 1: How do criminal defense attorneys get cases dismissed? You may be wondering that. Are you facing a criminal charge? Are you just curious about that type of question? Well, if so, this is the video for you. My name is Lance Fryar and I'm a criminal defense attorney and I've been defending people charged with crimes all throughout Washington State for more than 20 years. And let's face it, most people think that it might be impossible to get a criminal case dismissed, and believe it or not, it's not impossible. In fact, we get criminal cases dismissed all the time. So in this video, I'm going to cover what are some common ways we get a criminal case dismissed, what are the steps that many really good defense attorneys, including us, we take to get criminal cases dismissed, and how you might be able to help your attorney get your criminal case dismissed. So I'm putting out these videos as education. There's not a lot out there. So if you find this video helpful, please like and please subscribe. It helps get our information out there to the public. So, you know, is it hard to get a criminal case dismissed? Well, it is hard, but it's not impossible. So if you've watched a lot of TV, you see trials, and are trials how you get a case dismissed? Well, not necessarily. A trial is the hardest way to get a case dismissed, because let's face it, we don't know what the jury's going to say. For a felony, there's a 12-person jury. For a misdemeanor, there's a 6-person jury. And all 6 people in a misdemeanor are all 12 in a felony case. They have to agree about guilt to be found guilty, or all have to agree to innocence to be found not guilty. They don't agree, it's a hung jury, and the prosecutor can take your case to trial again. So the most important thing about getting a criminal case dismissed is what is the evidence? Can the prosecutor prove beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the crime that you're charged with? So are there any defenses? So in an assault case in Washington State, a prosecutor would need to prove that the defendant had intentional, unwanted touching of the victim that was harmful, basically, and that it wasn't self-defense. And so, think about it. When somebody gets arrested for a crime, it's usually not like what we see on TV where there's a huge investigation. The police just show up, and they talk to some people, and they make a decision, and they write a report. And oftentimes, just due to the limitations of the job, they don't get the whole story. So if you're charged with a crime, your defense attorney is going to talk to you, and they're going to ask you about, hey, confidentially between us, what actually happened? And do you have any witnesses that might be able to shed additional information on what actually happened? And so the prosecutor has a job to do. A prosecutor is supposed to do justice, but their primary job is to try to prove people guilty of crimes. And so, one of the most important things is, what is the evidence? Can the prosecutor prove the case or not? And that's a pitfall. So I want you to be careful there, because it's human beings that make decisions. I can't tell you how many times that I hear, well, they have no evidence. They have no evidence. Evidence is not just physical evidence. Evidence includes what a victim or a witness says happened. That's evidence. And so it's important that we take a look at what motivations those witnesses have to tell the truth or to lie, what they could have seen or not seen, things like that. But remember, again, computers are not making the decisions. It's human beings. So your defense attorney needs to find a way to get the prosecutor, who has a job to do, to listen to your side of the story. And that's where it can get complicated. And so for our firm, basically, we take a three-step approach to cases. Criminal matters go on for a long time. They could go on for three months, six months, a year or longer, and it's not something you maybe want to hear, but it's just a fact that the court dates are spread out based upon how many cases each court has to handle. So our three-step process basically involves not negotiating for a dismissal early in the case because in the first step, we need some time to pass. We need a little bit of time to pass to let everybody calm down. Think about it. If you ever see something shocking, the first time you see it, that's when you're the most shocked. Don't think about it if you're a prosecutor. The prosecutor looks at a report, that's usually when they're the maddest about it, the first time they see it. So it's not very smart to try to negotiate and try to get a prosecutor to dismiss your case early on. So one is we need a little bit of time to pass. Two, we need our client to do something. We need our client to do some type of class or some type of education, even if you're innocent. So that way the prosecutor can feel they've responded to the case. Because prosecutors, contrary to popular belief, they're not jerks. They're not just out to try to get you, you know, 95% of them aren't. They're trying to do good. And I was a prosecutor for seven years myself. So I remember I would ask defense attorneys, what are we doing to help the defendant? And while you may feel that you're innocent and you very well might be, the prosecutor has a report that says otherwise. And again, we want the prosecutor to let you go. We don't want to have to get to a jury, right? So we need our clients to do something so the prosecutor can feel part of the solution. So going back to that assault type of charge, right? We might have you do an anger management class. We might have you do some community service. We might have you do something so we can show that we're reasonable and that you as a client are reasonable and we understand there's two sides to the story, the prosecutor's side from the police report and our side from talking to you. And if we've done something, the prosecutor's more able to hear our side. Because think about it, everybody is self-interested. Your attorney's self-interested. They want to do a good job. They want to get you a good result. The judge is self-interested. They want to protect the public. They don't want to do something wrong so they don't get reelected. And the prosecutor's self-interested. They might have a victim who's complaining to them about what they want to see happen. They might have a boss that wants them to get certain results. And they just have a sense of pride that they want to do the right thing and protect the public. And hopefully they also want to help the person charged if something is there that they can help with. So if you've done something as a client, the prosecutor's more able to hear it and they can feel maybe there's a way to respond to the case without having to convict you. And then another thing that we do to try to get cases dismissed is we think about what do we know about the prosecutor? What type of person are they in the job? Are they more interested in proof issues? Are they only interested in proof issues or are they interested in the person issue too? Are they interested in you? Do they want to hear why something could have happened that was out of the ordinary? Do they want to hear that you're doing alcohol classes for your DUI charge or alcohol was involved in the assault? Is that something they respond to or do they only respond to the facts? Or is it a combination? And so the way criminal defense attorneys get cases dismissed primarily is using weaknesses in the fact pattern to suggest to the prosecutor that they're going to be unable to prove the case and then really good defense attorneys combine that weakness that the prosecutor might have on their case along with affirmative things they have their client do so the prosecutor's more willing to acknowledge the weaknesses and have their ego let the case go. Because again their job is to do justice but many prosecutors will feel their job is to get convictions and what we're talking about here is having you not be convicted and your case dismissed. So that's some common ways that we can get cases dismissed. What are some other ways? Well what are the legal ways? Well have you ever heard of illegal motions? If there's an illegal stop let's say in a DUI case attorneys we might bring a motion to dismiss the case for anything after the illegal stop is fruit of the poisonous tree is what they call it. So anything after the legal stop is suppressed. I can think of a case where we've got an officer pulling someone over for swerving and then it turned into a DUI arrest and then we got that video from the officer's car and looked at the video and it didn't show swerving and the prosecutor was unwilling to dismiss the case for whatever reason so then the attorney, we could bring a legal motion arguing to the court under case law that the stop was not legal and if the stop wasn't legal everything after it should be suppressed and therefore the case should be dismissed and cases in our office and others can get dismissed like that. What's another way us criminal defense attorneys can get a case dismissed? We can use other programs to get the case dismissed. There's things called stipulated orders of continuance. We can negotiate for certain types of resolutions that include a defendant staying out of trouble and maybe doing a few things then the case will get dismissed on the motion of the prosecutor. I've got another video in the series called stipulated order of continuances if you want to see more about that. Another way we can get a case dismissed is something called deferred prosecution. If you have a non-felony matter charged based upon, the crime is based upon alcohol consumption, we drank too much, a DUI, some even assaults can be dismissed like that, if we do a whole bunch of treatment for the alcohol and stay out of trouble we can get the case dismissed. What's another way a criminal attorney can get a case dismissed? There's something called compromise of a misdemeanor. If a victim of a crime has a civil cause of action against the defendant, think about hit and run where there's property damage or theft where there's loss of property, well if the victim is satisfied financially and signs a piece of paper saying they're satisfied, the defense can bring a motion to dismiss the case in that way and we have a video on that in the series as well about compromise of misdemeanors. So there's lots of different ways to get cases dismissed. The final way that, besides the negotiation as we talked about and these other alternative programs, would be trial. You can get a case dismissed at trial if a jury agrees that the prosecutor failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and that means looking at the elements of the crime charged and that could be from serious cases like sex offenses, assaults, anything can go to a trial and that is probably the last way you want to get your case dismissed because it's the riskiest, it takes the longest, and it's the most costly, but that is absolutely the last resort is, hey prosecutor, you need to prove the case. So thanks for staying around this long. I know I promised I would go over what you can do to help your attorney get your case dismissed and the primary thing you can do is listen to your attorney. If you've picked a highly rated attorney, they know what they're doing and the only people as concerned about your case as you are is your attorney because they're the ones in control. They're the ones who have to make the decisions to try to do right by you. And so listen to what they say and please don't try to be, you know, a Monday morning quarterback and inform them about the law because your attorney knows the law. Another thing you can do is, you know, get your witnesses together. You know, write out a story for your attorney about what happened. Make sure it says attorney client privilege, but make it easy to educate them on your life and what happened because attorneys are just people. We get busy too, right? And so basically the easier you make it on us to understand your story, the better we are able to tell it. And I think the final thing you can do to help your attorney get your case dismissed is engage in any programs that the attorney needs you to do. Now a good attorney is going to work with you for your budget and convenience and try to explain that anything we need you to do may be to benefit you or may be also to benefit the case, hopefully both, because there's always something we can learn. So try to follow through with any educational classes or anything the attorney needs you to do. So those are the ways that at least come to my mind of how criminal defense attorneys get cases dismissed. It's not about who you know. It's not about, you know, knowing judges and stuff like that. It does help to have a very good reputation with the deciders, the prosecutors and the judges, but mainly it's about evidence issues along with client efforts. The combination of evidence issues and client efforts and how your attorney speaks to the deciders, the prosecutors and the court, will greatly improve your chances of getting your criminal case dismissed. So if you find this video helpful, please like, please subscribe, helps me get the information out. And if you're in a criminal situation where you need an attorney, feel free to give our office a call. Again, my name's Lance Friberg. I have a law firm in Linwood, Washington. We have been defending people charged with crimes for more than 20 years. If it makes sense, we'll set you an appointment, we'll listen to what happened, we'll do everything we can, and we'll be there for you. Thank you.