One of the realities of working in criminal prosecution is the plea bargain. There are numerous reasons plea bargains are routinely utilized in criminal law: (1) to avoid the expense of trial; (2) to avoid over burdening the jury pool and the public with unnecessary jury trials; (3) to minimize the emotional damage trial can have on victims of crime when forced to face the defendant; (5) to balance the needs of public safety with mitigating factors of a defendant;. The list goes on and on really, and, given the fact that around ninety percent of all criminal cases filed end in a plea, a plea bargain is the way of life.

Sometimes no offer is made and a defendant has to chose between admitting all of his crimes or heading to trial to roll the dice.

In 2017 my office had a slew of cases where no offers were made and defendants had to simply go to trial or plead to the sheet. Our County in November 2017 endured a wide-scale evacuation of thousands of residents when a large dam in the foothills of the County almost collapsed. Towns were evacuated and an entire community sat in silence, waiting to see if their entire life would be washed away.

#24 was one of those cases. The victim in this case had his home burglarized while being evacuated. Tools, jewelry, a TV, and a gun was stolen. The defendant lived .1 miles away from the home and the gun and tools were found in his room during a routine probation search. Defendant claimed to have purchased the tools and denied knowledge of the gun in his closet; however, in jail calls the defendant discussed the gun with a third party.

Defendant was charged with possession of a gun as a felon, possession of stolen property, and two prior strikes. This would normally be a case where we had a lot of things to work with to negotiate a settlement. In fact, defendant and defense counsel asked at every opportunity for an offer short of plead as charged. But our office took a hard line. If you committed crime against those affected by the evacuation there would be no deals.

So it was off to jury trial we went. The defendant waived his right to a jury trial-which was a smart tactic as it would have been hard to find jurors who were not affected in some way by the evacuation. Defendant was found guilty as charged by the Court.

At sentencing the defendant argued that he should be sentenced to probation or a lower term because, ironically, he had found a job working on the reconstruction of the dam. Defendant had profited on the evacuation through his possession of the stolen property and was profiting on the reconstruction by obtaining employment.

I don’t recall what the court ultimately sentenced the defendant to but the irony was not lost on the court. The sentence ultimately doesn’t matter here as the Court is in charge of determining a sentence in a plead as charge case or when there is a verdict. The defendant was found guilty as charged and justice was served.