You don’t have to plead guilty

Uncover why pleading guilty shouldn’t be your automatic choice, even under attorney advice, with insights from our team of experts. Explore your legal options, understand the implications of your plea and learn how to advocate for your best interest. This video is essential for anyone facing legal decisions.

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Speaker 1
00;00;00;01 – 00;00;01;07
Hi. Did you know you don’t have to pleas guilty, even if your lawyer tells you you need to? This is Christina Williams, with Jus Criminal Law.
Speaker 2
00;00;09;08 – 00;00;10;15
And David Mann, legal storytelling specialist. So an attorney can just tell the client to plead guilty, and they don’t have to do it. You’d think you would, right?
Speaker 1
00;00;19;25 – 00;00;21;03
Right. I mean, sometimes, you know, your attorneys may be looking at evidence differently than you want them to, or maybe they just don’t want to take your case to trial for some other reason. And so, they’re convincing you to look at pleading guilty, but you really don’t want to. What should you do? Well, I’ve had that situation happen and the person just came to our office. We had talked to them early on before they’d made a decision of who to hire, and they ended up hiring aa different attorney. But when it came time for trial, that attorney didn’t want to go to trial for them. And so they came back to our office and said, ‘You know, will you take over the case and take this to trial?’ And we did.
Speaker 2
00;01;05;17 – 00;01;06;18
And then what happened when you went to trial?
Speaker 1
00;01;07;16 – 00;01;09;13
Well, we got a not guilty verdict, and it was a very quick not guilty verdict. I think the jury came back in less than 5 minutes. And really, the case was a very good case for the client, who made the right decision in taking it to trial.
Speaker 2
00;01;23;05 – 00;01;25;10
Was there anything unusual about the circumstances of that case? What was the story?
Speaker 1
00;01;28;25 – 00;01;31;25
Sure. So the client was charged with stalking. And what was happening was, it was summer and he was going to have a barbeque at his house with his roommates and invite some friends over. So they were going grocery shopping. And the friends go through and pick up supplies for the barbeque. And the client who’s out at Walmart sees this attractive young lady and he thinks, ‘I’m just going to take a risk and ask her if she wants to come over to our barbeque.’ And so he watches to see where he goes and ends up following her back to the Dairy Department. And there’s a bunch of people around her. And so he’s like, ‘Well, I’m going to wait ’til maybe she’s in an aisle by herself so I can ask her, and if she shoots me down, not everybody’s watching.’ And so, he just kind of waited for her to end up going down, I think it was the cereal aisle. And so he started to approach her to ask her if she wanted to come over to the barbeque. And she had noticed that he was, you know, watching her. And as he started to approach her, she just left the cart, and walked out of WalMart, called her boyfriend and said she felt like somebody was stalking her. And then she posted this cautionary tale on social media about how you need to watch out when you’re in WalMart. And so the police were called and they ended up charging this person with stalking. And that’s all he did. He never tried to contact her after she left WalMart. He only tried to walk up to her at one point in time, and she walked away. So there really was not this reasonable person standard of would a reasonable person feel harassed and intimidated under these circumstances. And so, when we made our closing arguments to the jury, I just said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, really, you shouldn’t make this the new standard of conduct where a young man has to worry about being charged with stalking because he’s going to approach a young woman in WalMart and ask her to a barbeque. And the jury agreed with me and they came back not guilty and it was over and he was so happy that he took it to trial.
Speaker 2
00;04;01;16 – 00;04;03;15
That is an amazing story. And it actually is a good example of how much this story actually influences the outcome of cases. Because without that story, if you just get sort of a sketch of, like, he was following her around WalMart, it might be a lot blurrier. But with all of this story, you really say it’s clearly Not Guilty. And it’s kind of amazing that there would be an attorney who would say, ‘Hey, you know, you just need to plead guilty to this.
Speaker 1
00;04;28;29 – 00;04;30;04
I know it is. And it was concerning to the client. And luckily he trusted his gut and came to us.
Speaker 2
00;04;34;22 – 00;04;37;07
Yeah. Well, how can other people come to you?
Speaker 1
00;04;37;07 – 00;04;37;20
Sure. We’ll include a link in the description where they can call, text, or chat with a member of my team, any time, day or night. Here at Just Criminal Law, we know you only get one shot at justice. So make yours count!