Criminal defense lawyers help people who are often at their lowest, who are potentially facing unjust accusations, and who need help protecting themselves against the power of the state. We also help those who messed up or made mistakes, aiming to stop those mistakes from affecting them for the rest of their lives.
Whether you are facing severe criminal charges with a potential for years in jail or infractions with a mere fine attached, our lawyers can help protect your rights, fight unfair evidence, seek to get unfair charges dropped, and help you at every stage of your criminal case.
For a free review of your case, call Overson Law’s criminal defense attorneys today at (801) 758-2287 right away.
Parts of a Criminal Case Our Lawyers Can Help with in Millcreek, UT
Our criminal defense lawyers can help at various stages of your case, from beginning to end. The following are not each stage of your case, but rather each stage that our lawyers can provide maximum effect:
Warrants
If there is a warrant for your arrest or police intend to serve you with a warrant to search your house, our lawyers can step in early on in the case and help you cooperate in a way that will avoid incriminating you. There is a stark difference between giving the police and prosecution what they want and cooperating while still protecting your rights. Our lawyers can help draw that line, potentially helping you avoid further attention from the police and getting them off your back before charges are ever filed.
Once charges have been filed and you have been ordered to go to court, a failure to appear might result in a bench warrant. Our lawyers can also help you with these, potentially arranging a new court date and allowing you to face the charges you already had filed against you while avoiding potential re-arrest on the bench warrant. Bench warrants can trigger an arrest any time the police encounter you – such as in a routine traffic stop – so it is best to address them head-on as soon as you can rather than having a warrant pop up at an inopportune time, leading to intrusive searches and unnecessary arrests.
Interrogations
Your right to an attorney and your right to remain silent are incredibly powerful tools to help keep criminal charges from getting out of hand. You can potentially stop charges in the first place if you enforce these rights at this early stage of the case.
Talking to police without a lawyer is often a bad idea because you do not know what they know and how they intend to view the information provided. Our lawyers can step in and help protect you from answering any questions that might incriminate you. We can also potentially help enhance cooperation, getting the police to take the information you provide and direct their attention elsewhere rather than dragging you into a criminal case you might not have real involvement in at all.
Arraignments
During your arraignment, you enter your plea. To continue fighting your case, you enter a “not guilty” plea. Even if you do plan to ultimately plead guilty, you should not do it at this stage unless and until our lawyers work out a plea agreement with the prosecution to help lower penalties or reduce charges in exchange for your planned guilty plea.
Bail Hearings
It is much easier to fight the case against you while you have your freedom. Being able to continue to go to your job and care for your children while facing a difficult criminal case is essential, plus it allows you flexibility to meet with your defense team and have the income to afford a lawyer in the first place. Our attorneys can help argue for your release and for a low-dollar bail amount that will allow release. You especially need a lawyer to help with this if the prosecution is bent on keeping you in jail while you await trial.
Negotiations
People often view the law as firm and concrete, but many acts can be charged under multiple statutes, some of which carry harsher penalties than others. Additionally, bringing a case to trial is expensive for the government, and it takes time away from other cases and from the court’s schedule. When a defendant pleads guilty, it saves the prosecution time and money, often making them willing to come down on charges or penalties in exchange for a guilty plea. This can help you get out of more serious penalties, drop felony charges to misdemeanors, or turn jail time into probation when a plea agreement is allowed.
Trial
Before and during trial, there are motions and objections to make to try to shut down the prosecution’s use of illegally obtained or controversial evidence that might be unfair to use. Our lawyers can file these and other motions. We can also file pretrial motions to get charges dismissed that do not properly apply, narrowing the issues that are actually tried at trial.
Ultimately, at trial itself, we can put on your defense, call our own witnesses, cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses, and present a closing argument that seeks to get the judge or jury on your side, potentially getting you acquitted.
Appeals
Our lawyers can also help you appeal wrong decisions that affected the outcome of your case, potentially getting you a new trial. We can also help at that new trial, potentially getting a different result than the lawyer you used the first time around.
We can also help with post-conviction relief – additional “collateral appeals” used outside of the traditional appeals process. These collateral appeals deal with factual innocence claims, new evidence, and changes in the law.
Expungement
Long after a criminal case is over and done, your time has been served, and your fines have been paid, the conviction might still sit on your criminal record. Many people are eligible for expungement, a process that wipes that conviction off your record and allows you to apply for jobs without having to check the box saying you were previously convicted of a crime.
Call Our Criminal Defense Attorneys in Millcreek, UT Today
Call Overson Law at (801) 758-2287 for a free case review with our criminal defense attorneys today.
