The legal process can be complicated and daunting. That is why someone who is charged with a crime needs to have a straightforward, aggressive criminal defense attorney whom he knows has his best interests at heart. A defendant’s best interests can be served through various routes, depending on a specific case and set of circumstances.
Sometimes, agreeing to a plea deal when faced with criminal charges can be the wisest, safest option. There are other times, however, when a defendant and his attorney want to fight to prove innocence in a trial, when they believe that the plea deal unnecessarily compromises the defendant’s freedom and future. In a Colorado hit-and-run case, the defendant and his attorney decided that a plea deal was a good idea.
According to The Colorado Springs Gazette, a 44-year-old bicyclist was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Colorado last year. Authorities identified the driver behind the crash and pursued the hit-and-run charge, along with DUI and tampering with evidence charges. But the prosecution reportedly recognized that it didn’t have enough to prove that the 50-year-old defendant’s blood alcohol content was over the legal limit at the time of crash.
When faced with that reality, the prosecution and defense worked together and agreed that the DUI and evidence tampering charges would be dropped if the defendant would just plead guilty to the hit-and-run accident. He and his attorney agreed, and the defendant will serve eight years following that plea deal, as well as five years of probation upon release.
Again, it is important to stress that a plea deal is a strategy that must be considered thoroughly and honestly with a trusted criminal defense attorney. It’s possible that this defendant was more apt to accept a plea deal involving the dropped DUI charge because he already has two DUIs in his past.
Source
The Colorado Springs Gazette: “Driver gets 8-year sentence in cyclist’s death,” Lance Benzel, Jan. 9, 2012