Maryland Criminal Attorney Blog

What Happens When an Attorney Fails to Properly Evaluate a Case Properly or Defendant’s Refuse to Follow their Attorney’s Advice?

November 18, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

https://criminal.silvermanthompson.com/lawyer-attorney-1709297.html Aggressive Maryland Criminal Attorneys represent hundreds of individuals in the District and Circuit Courts each year. Perhaps the most important skill that a criminal defense attorney must possess is the ability to evaluate the strength of the State’s case against the defendant. Too often I witness attorneys pleading people guilty in cases where there are strong defenses. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true and all too often I see attorneys taking cases to trial where there is no hope of an acquittal. When this happens defendants are almost invariably sentenced more harshly than they otherwise would have been had their attorney negotiated a plea bargain. This is why it is critically important for any criminal defendant to make sure that the attorney that represents him is a criminal specialist with sufficient experience to know whether to pursue a trial strategy or a plea.

I witnessed this scenario play out in court last week where a defendant charged with armed robbery faced overwhelming evidence of his guilt, including that the entire crime was captured on crystal clear surveillance video. The plea offer was 10 years to serve. For reasons I do not understand, the defendant’s attorney took the case before a Baltimore County Jury that, after deliberating for less than 30 minutes, returned the inevitable guilty verdict. The judge then sentenced the client to 20 years to serve, 10 years longer than he was offered in return for a guilty plea. Sometimes when this occurs it is the result of poor representation by the attorney but sometimes it results from a defendant refusing to accept the advice of his attorney. This case reminded me of one of the most striking examples from my career of a defendant refusing to heed his attorney’s advice. The case took place in Baltimore City Circuit Court a few years ago. Here are the facts:
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Defendant Charged with DUI in Baltimore City Not Guilty

October 8, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

Maryland DUI/DWI Attorneys with decades of experience often find and successfully pursue defenses that less experienced attorneys find or even bother looking for. Unfortunately, many inexperienced DUI attorneys or attorneys who really specialize in areas of the law other than criminal defense, never look beyond the breathalyzer result, particularly in first offense cases that don’t involve an accident or any injuries. The thinking is that the first offender will in most cases receive probation before judgment (PBJ) anyway so why bother? The person won’t go to jail and will not get points on his or her license so a PBJ is really as good as a not guilty or a dismissal. I beg to differ.

Aggressive and Experienced DUI Attorneys know that there is a world of difference between a PBJ and a not guilty verdict. First of all, even if the client does receive PBJ, he or she will almost certainly be required to pay fines, attend alcohol counseling and serve a period of supervised probation. There may be other time consuming and costly requirements placed upon the client as well such as community work service, AA meetings and shock trauma visits to name just a few. Moreover, the PBJ can NEVER be expunged from the person’s record so even though the defendant will not have points assessed by the MVA, a record of the PBJ will always be kept which means that if the person ever gets charged with DUI again – even many years later- the stakes will be much higher as he will be a repeat offender.

And on top of all of this, in a garden variety first offense https://criminal.silvermanthompson.com/lawyer-attorney-1704950.html there is little risk to the client in not accepting the plea bargain offered by the State as there is cases involving accidents or repeat offenders. I say this because most judges will grant the defendant PBJ even after a trial in which the defendant is found guilty, so in my view you may as well take a shot at the not guilty if you have any possible defense at all. There is really nothing to lose. Here are the facts of the case I had last week:
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Serious Assault Case Successfully Defended in Baltimore County Circuit Court

September 23, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

Assault Cases are among the most common cases Aggressive Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys handle. These are among the most serious cases that we see, particularly when the case involves significant injury or a vulnerable victim. The maximum penalty for just misdemeanor Assault, known as Second Degree Assault is a whopping 10 years! Of course people do not often the maximum penalty for this crime, but people are regularly incarcerated for assault cases in Maryland.

I had a case in Baltimore County last week involving a fight between two women. Prison was a distinct possibility for my client in the event of a conviction as the so called victim in the case was both seriously injured and at least claimed to be a vulnerable victim. Here are the facts of the case.
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Date Rape Client Successfully Defended after Switching Lawyers

August 7, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

I am often confronted with clients who want to change lawyers because for one reason or another they have lost confidence in their current attorney. I have blogged about this issue often and usually do so by positing the rhetorical question, “did you hire the right lawyer”. I recently confronted this situation with a client who was charged with Second Degree Rape and related offenses. Obviously these are very serious charges that need to be handled by someone who knows what he or she is doing. In addition to facing serious jail time, anyone convicted of a sex offense faces the daunting prospect of being required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, there are many attorneys who will take on cases such as this one, who simply do not know what they are doing. Needless to say the results can be disastrous for the client depending upon at what point in the process the client determines that he is not be well represented. This particular client figured it out somewhere in the middle. That is, in time to prevent total disaster but not before suffering significant but unnecessary consequences. I have handled scores of sex offenses in my career but never one with facts quite like this one.
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Defendant Charged in Handgun Case Avoids Five Year Sentence after Switching Lawyers.

August 6, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

I have often written about the perils of hiring unqualified. Perhaps it is due to the current economic conditions, but I am increasingly seeing attorneys whom I know are NOT criminal specialists handling criminal cases, including serious felonies in the Circuit Court. I think that people who are not experienced in dealing with attorneys think that a lawyer is a lawyer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like doctors, many lawyers specialize in various areas of the law including criminal defense. It seems like a pretty obvious point that the lawyer specializes in one area is going to develop more expertise in that area than a so called “general practitioner” who often handle cases in as many as a dozen separate areas of the law.

I have in many instances throughout my career been hired by people who have belatedly figured out that their attorney simply did not know what he or she was doing. Sometimes that realization comes before any real damage has been done and sometime only after. Here is a specific case involving domestic violence and handgun offenses that I took over from another lawyer who was in over his head:
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Distribution of Child Pornography

August 5, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

As an Aggressive Criminal Attorney and former prosecutor with 20 years of experience, I have been involved in the prosecution of hundreds of cases involving the possession and distribution of Child Pornography, on both sides of the aisle. These are very serious offenses that almost invariably result in the incarceration of defendants who are convicted.

Because the Child Pornography is almost always distributed and downloaded from the internet, there is dual federal and state jurisdiction to prosecute these cases. Often the mere threat of a federal prosecution is enough to convince defendants charged in the state system to accept plea bargains because the penalties in the federal system are draconian and mandatory. Anyone charged with these very serious charges needs to immediately retain an experienced criminal defense attorney to represent them. As I said, I have handled many of these cases. Here are the specifics on one I handled recently.
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Two Contintental Arms Gun Range Cases Successfully resolved

April 30, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

As an Aggressive Baltimore Maryland Criminal Attorney I have handled more of these Continental Arms Gun Range Cases that any other attorney that I am aware of. Last week I handled two of theses case in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. Both defendants were facing mandatory 5 years prison terms – neither served a day in jail and both received unsupervised probation.

I have blogged about these cases several times in the past noting that in my view, these cases represent the worst in law enforcement and are in many ways counterproductive to main objective of law enforcement which is, of course, to keep the community safe. The reason for my belief that these cases are in fact counterproductive stems from both the simple fact that these cases are prosecuted in the first place, and this fact is compounded by the “scorched earth” tactics utilized by the police to investigate them. More on that later but here are the facts of the cases:
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DUI Repeat Offender is Second Not Guilty This Week in DUI Case

February 26, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

As an Aggressive Baltimore Maryland DUI Attorney I have handled literally thousands of DUI cases both as a former prosecutor and as a defense attorney. I have written several times in this blog that it is extremely difficult these days to secure a not guilty in a DUI case on the issue of whether in fact the client was under the influence or impaired. I have won more than my fair share of DUI trials over the last 15 years since I left the State’s Attorney’s Office but the overwhelming majority have been on technical issues such as an illegal stop or the State’s inability to prove that my client was the operator of the vehicle.

I published a blog last week about a DUI trial that I won on the impairment issue but that was only one of two that week. I won a second on this issue in spite of the fact that my client had 3 recently consumed beer cans in the car when he was stopped and told the police that he would not do the field sobriety tests because he “would fail them”. That case was scheduled in the District Court for Baltimore County last Friday. Here are the facts:
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Not Guilty in DUI Case Where Defendant Blows .15 on PBT

February 22, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

As a Baltimore Maryland DUI/DWI Lawyer, I have handled more than 5,000 DUI cases. I have blogged many times about the new laws that have been passed in recent years, particularly the DUI Per Se law, making it increasingly difficult to get Not Guilty verdicts for clients in these cases. More often than not, if the police have probable cause for the stop, it is a relatively easy matter for prosecutors to prove the balance of their case. particularly if the person submits to a breathalyzer and the result is .08 or greater.

I represented a client in Baltimore County District Court this week whose case proved to be one of the exceptions to the rule. In spite of the fact that she blew a .15 on the PBT at the scene, I secured her not guilty verdicts on each of the alcohol related offenses. Here are the facts:
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Johns Hopkins Gynecologist Dr. Nikita A. Levy

February 19, 2013 | Steven D. Silverman

Sexual assault and child pornography. These words have thus far been missing from the discussion concerning former Hopkins doctor Nikita A. Levy’s alleged filming of his patients in various states of undress. Dr. Levy’s alleged actions constitute a form of sexual assault against every patient he filmed in this manner. Moreover, Dr. Levy (and potentially others) are guilty of possessing, manufacturing and distributing child pornography to the extent that any of the victims were under age 18.
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John Hopkins Gynecologist Nikita Levy Likely Violated Child Pornography and Other Criminal Statutes

February 19, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

As a Former Baltimore Prosecutor and current criminal attorney I have been involved in the prosecution of hundreds of child sex offenders. The disgraced and now deceased Johns Hopkins Gynecologist, Dr. Nikita Levy, would have likely faced prosecution under multiple federal and state criminal statutes had he not apparently committed suicide. The police are conducting an investigation that could potentially lead to charges against others if they either conspired with him to collect the images without the knowledge of the victims or if the materials were distributed to by others. In addition to many other areas of practice at STSW, we have a Practice Area Exclusively Dedicated to the Protection of Victim’s Rights.

Among the most serious charges that could have been filed against Dr. Levy and anyone who may have participated with him in these crimes, are charges involving the possession, distribution and manufacture of child pornography. According to news reports, many of his long time patients sent subsequently sent their daughters to him for gynecological care. Assuming any of the large cache of photos allegedly found in his home, turn out to be of minor victims, these statutes have undoubtedly been violated.
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An Online Map to the Guns: Privacy, Gun Owners and Safety

January 18, 2013 | Steven D. Silverman

In a media-generating stunt, the Journal News, a suburban paper in Westchester County, NY, accessed state public gun permit records, compiled the names and addresses of gun owners in three New York Counties, and then posted an online map identifying and marking on the map all of the gun permit holders in each county, with their home addresses. (New York state law requires that the identity of gun permit holders be made public.) Wisely citing safety concerns, Putnam County officials, however, refused to release to the Journal News their gun permit holders’ personal information.
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It’s a Dirty Job: Protect Yourself Against the Clean Water Act

January 16, 2013 | Steven D. Silverman

Recently there have been unprecedented fines and prison terms handed down by judges in Maryland and nationwide for Clean Water Act violations and other environmental crimes. On December 5, 2012, Judge Stagg of the Western District of Louisiana sentenced John Tuma, a former general manager of Arkla Disposal Services, to 60 months in prison, 36 months probation thereafter, and a $100,000 fine for violations of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”). Tuma worked at Arkla’s Shreveport, Louisiana wastewater treatment facility where he allegedly oversaw the discharge of untreated wastewater. Based on those allegations, a federal jury convicted Tuma on 3 counts of violating the CWA, 1 count of conspiracy to violate the CWA, and 1 count of obstructing justice with respect to the EPA’s inspection of the Arkla facility. Tuma has appealed the conviction and sentencing.
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Trafficking Narcotics with Firearms Count DISMISSED – Client Avoids Mandatory 5 Year Sentence

January 2, 2013 | Brian G. Thompson

As Aggressive Maryland Criminal Attorneys, the Criminal Defense Team at STSW represents scores of defendants each year who face Mandatory Sentences that must be served without parole for violating Narcotics and Firearms Laws. I have written about many of these cases in the past as they tend to be among the most difficult cases that criminal defense attorneys confront. A few weeks ago I represented three members of a family who had been charged with Trafficking Narcotics with a Firearm.

In addition to this count, the father was also charged with being a Felon in Possession of a Handgun. Both of these counts carry Minimum Mandatory Penalties of five years in prison without the possibility of parole. Needless to say it was a very serious case. Here are the facts:
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University Assault Case Sucessfully Resolved

September 17, 2012 | Brian G. Thompson

I have blogged my times about the need to hire and Experienced and Aggressive Criminal Attorney if charged with a criminal offense in Maryland. I usually begin these blogs by positing the question, “Did you hire the right lawyer”. The reason for this is that so many people do not inquire into the experience and qualifications of an attorney before hiring him or her. Sometimes the lack of qualifications is a basic as the lawyer is simply not a criminal attorney but instead is a divorce lawyer or a personal injury lawyer. Sometimes it is lack of experience in a particular type of case or in the jurisdiction in which the defendant is charged.

Hiring the wrong lawyer is obviously a mistake regardless of the type of case at issue, but in a criminal case, the mistake can cause lifelong negative consequences. Unfortunately I witness this happening in court virtually everyday. I recently resolved an assault case that is a good example of this. Here are the facts:
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