Surprisingly, not all criminal cases reach trial. Prosecutors might decide to dismiss some charges, especially when there is no or inadequate evidence to prosecute you. At times, the prosecution might decide to refrain from filing a charge at the preliminary hearing Some defendants also escape trial through pretrial motions like a motion to suppress. So, what makes all criminal cases fail to go to trial? What cases go to trial? And what circumstances can make a case go to trial? This article seeks to bring light to all these questions.
Factors that Reduce Chances for Criminal Cases to Going to Trial
A vast majority of legal cases never go to trial. Instead, the defendant usually agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge than the one they would have gone to trial in a process known as a plea bargain.
Plea Bargains and How They Bar Criminal Cases from Going to Trial
A plea bargain is an agreement between a defendant and the prosecutor. The defendant agrees to a "no contest'' or "nolo contendere "or pleads guilty in exchange for an agreement for the prosecutor to drop one or several charges. The prosecutor usually reduces the charges to a less serious offense or recommends judging a specific sentence acceptable to the defendant.
As many people are being arrested, prisons and jails continue to be more crowded. At the same time, prosecutors and judges alike feel an increased pressure to move their cases quickly through the judicial systems. Criminal trials usually take several days, weeks, months, or even years, while plea bargains take only a few minutes. Therefore, prosecutors find plea bargains the best option to reduce the judicial system's burden.
For these reasons and others, plea bargains have become popular despite their many critics against them. More than 90% of convictions have come from negotiated pleas, meaning that only less than 10% of the criminal cases end up in trial. Although most people have seen plea bargains and sneaky forms of judicial agreement, both federal and state governments have formulated explicit rules that govern how to arrange and accept plea bargains in court.
Plea Bargains in California
The passing of California Proposition 8 in 1892 saw a significant change in how plea bargains are conducted in California. Under this Proposition, serious felonies like violent sex crimes, using a gun in particular offenses, and certain DUI offenses were banned from a plea bargain. However, three exceptions would make these restricted offenses go into a plea bargain. These exceptions include:
- Insufficient evidence to prove you are guilty.
- Lack of testimonies of a material witness.
- When reduction or dismissal would not lead to a substantial change in the sentence.
Sometimes cases can continue to be negotiated even when the exceptions provided above don't apply. How so? This happens since the plea bargain restriction only applies when there is an indictment or changes of the charge information. Therefore, there is no restriction on bargaining before these two procedures.
The prosecutor and defense attorneys usually bargain during these stages. During these bargains, both sides might suffer if they don't have enough information to make relevant offers and acceptance. In some cases, both parties might decide to negotiate a plea if their evidence is inadequate.
Charge and Sentence Plea Bargaining
Judges and lawyers usually divide plea bargains into two types. This includes sentence bargaining and charges bargaining. Sentencing bargaining is a plea bargain in which the prosecutor agrees to a lighter sentence for a specific allegation if the defendant pleads guilty or no contest to them. On the other hand, a charge bargain is a method where the prosecutor agrees to drop specific charges or reduce the charge to a less serious offense in exchange for a defendant's plea bargain.
California Infractions and How They Reduce Chances of a Jury Trial
Another instance where a case cannot go to a jury trial is when charged with an infraction. Unlike felonies or misdemeanors, a defendant charged with an infraction only has to appear to court at a court-issued date. The date of the infraction citation is usually a due date on which the defendant must schedule an arraignment.
Defendants also have the chance of paying fines for the infraction online or schedule an arraignment date in court. An attorney would still appear on behalf of the defendant for all the court appearances. A defendant can enter a guilty plea, no contest, or guilty. The matter usually moves to trial in a not guilty plea, which should be held within forty-five days of the arraignment.
Please note, the only difference between a trial in an infraction and other trials in other types of offenses is that defendants aren't entitled to a jury trial.
Motion to Suppress Evidence and How It Affects Cases Going to Trial
A motion to suppress evidence can bar an allegation from going to trial. Motion to suppress evidence is a form of pretrial motion that the defendant makes to exclude any illegally obtained evidence.
If the court rules in favor of the defendant, prosecutors cannot introduce the evidence in question during the trial. However, when the evidence is completely suppressed, the prosecutor will have nothing to present during the trial, meaning that they will either resolve into a plea bargain or have the court dismiss the case.
Defendants can hold the motion to suppress evidence at the preliminary hearing or at a pretrial hearing held to address the motion specifically. The main goal of suppressing evidence through a pretrial motion is to exclude evidence obtained through illegal search and seizure. Penal Code 1538.5 describes illegal search and seizure as:
- A search that's undertaken without a warrant or is unreasonable.
- A search that's conducted without a sufficient warrant.
- A search that's conducted whereas the property in question isn’t included in the warrant.
- A search that's conducted without probable cause on the warrant.
- Violation of both federal and state constitutional search standards.
- A search that's conducted in a manner that involves police misconduct.
Both the prosecution and the defendant must meet the required burden of proof during this motion. For a search warrant made without a warrant, it's presumed it was unreasonable, meaning that the prosecution has the burden to show that the search was reasonable. For a search undertaken with a warrant, the court presumes that it's legal, meaning that the defense has the burden to justify that the warrant wasn’t legal.
Regardless of the side that must present evidence, it must prove the case by a "preponderance of the evidence."
Another thing that you need to understand is, you must demonstrate that you expected reasonable privacy in the place that was allegedly illegally searched. Failure to meet this requirement will consider the search legal, which in turn doesn't suppress the evidence as expected.
California laws exclude the following properties or places as places where you expect reasonable privacy:
- An abandoned place.
- A car that you've stolen.
- A car that you were riding but you didn’t own.
On the other hand, California laws include the following properties as places that you'd expect reasonable privacy:
- Your vehicle.
- Your home.
- Your cellphone’s content.
- A tent designed to keep you away from the public.
- The personal belonging that you’ve brought to school.
Pitchess Motion and How They Can Bar a Criminal Case from Advancing to Trial
A Pitchess Motion is a pretrial motion made by a defendant to inspect a law enforcement officer's file as evidence of police misconduct. Defendants usually file a pitchess motion when they suspect that their arresting officer would have made a false police report filing or used excessive force.
You can use the pitchess motion to prove that the arresting officer committed misconduct against you. Examples of misconduct that you can file for include:
- Racially profiling
- Use of excessive force
- Lying in the police report
- Planting evidence
To prove these misconducts, you should access the officer's personnel file to collect relevant evidence. The personnel files allow defendants to see whether the police officer committed some misconduct in the past. Proving any former misconduct shows that the officer is used to this, which is critical in dismissing any evidence collected by the officer.
California laws allow defendants to obtain relevant details from an officer personnel file through information request according to Senate Bill 1421 or by filing a Pitchess Motion.
Senate Bill (SB) 1421 allows specific types of police records to be open to public scrutiny. These records include:
- Records related to an incidence or investigation about an officer who shoots his or her gun at another person.
- Records related to an incidence or investigation about a police officer who uses force against another person resulting in significant bodily injury or death.
- Records related to an event showing a police officer’s engagement in sexual harassment.
- Records related to an event prove that the officer's actions were dishonest.
In the last category, dishonest conducts may include any of the following:
- False statement.
- Falsifying evidence.
- Filing a false report.
- Destroying evidence.
Under SB 1421, the specific information that the defendant seeks to be released for public inspection include the following:
- Investigation report.
- Autopsy reports.
- Photographic and video evidence.
- Copies of the officer's disciplinary records.
- Transcript or recorded interview.
- Recommended findings.
Alternatively, you can file a Pitchess Motion in court in the effort of raising doubts on the credibility of the information provided by your arresting officer. In California, the process of filing a Pitchess Motion entails three crucial elements. These elements include:
- Procedural filing steps.
- Showing “good cause.”
- "In camera hearing."
Once you complete these steps, there are two possible outcomes that you would expect. These include granting the motion and disclosing the information or denial of the motion, which does not disclose the information.
If the judge grants the motion, he or she will provide the defendant with information of anyone who'd previously filed a complaint against the officer in question. The defense attorney will then contact these people and interview them about the facts representing them as potential witnesses.
Please note that if the judge orders disclosure of the information, but the agency holding the information doesn't comply with the request, the charges against you must be dismissed.
Unavailability of Witness or Lost Evidence
If there is no key witness available to testify in a criminal case or the prosecutor loses crucial physical evidence, he or she will have no choice but to dismiss your case since there is no enough evidence to prove that you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In some allegations, the presence of physical evidence is crucial. Therefore, without it, the prosecutor cannot prove his case.
Prosecutors might also lack physical evidence if the witness dies, disappears, or refuses to testify on the ground that the testimony might incriminate him. Some cases also rely on the ability of a witness to identify a defendant as a perpetrator. Without the identification, it might be challenging to convict someone, which might lead to a dismissal of the case by the prosecutor.
Your prosecutor might also dismiss your case before it goes to trial when you prove against how the police conducted a line-up to identify you as the perpetrator of the alleged crime. If the judge finds out that the police did the line-up improperly, he or she might not allow the witness to identify you at trial, meaning that the trial will probably not be held.
Dismissal of Your Allegation Under the Prosecutor's Discretion
Under rare circumstances, prosecutors might decide to dismiss charges when there are extenuating circumstances. For instance, a prosecutor can decide to dismiss a misdemeanor charge like loitering or trespassing if you have a clean record. There are questions about the process used to collect evidence. Prosecutors have the discretion to release allegations without prejudice. This means that they can re-file the case later if you pick up new charges or get into trouble within a specific period.
In very rare circumstances, a victim might request charges against a defendant to be dismissed, and the prosecutor might agree to do so. Normally, victims don't have control over whether a particular criminal case should move forward, but they might make this decision under the prosecutor's discretion. In these circumstances, the prosecutor might decide to dismiss a case if the victim's testimony in court would lead to devastating emotional harm that has a long-term effect on him or her. This is common in sexual assault cases.
Supreme Court Provision on Mandatory Cases that Should Go to Trial
The right to trial by jury resides in Article three, Section 2 of the federal constitution. According to this right, judges must handle the trial of all crimes through a jury except for impeached cases. Also, under the Sixth Amendment, the accused should enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial conducted by an impartial jury.
However, the right isn't as broad as it suggests, meaning that most defendants have to settle for a judge trial if there are high chances that they are guilty of a particular crime.
The Supreme Court suggests that jury-trial should only apply when serious offenses are at hand. Under this provision, serious offenses include those carrying a potential sentence that lasts for more than six months in prison. If the imprisonment lasts for six months or less, the crime becomes a serious one if the sum of its penalties is weighty.
Multiple Files and How They Affect Cases Going to Trial
Prosecutors regularly file more than one charge against defendants. So, what happens when there are multiple charges against a defendant when an individual carries six months or less but exceeds the six months when added together?
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has held that jury trials cannot apply in circumstances when there are multiple filings against one defendant. Therefore, if the defendant has been charged with two allegations of obstructing the mail, each providing a maximum of six months, the Court still holds that this defendant cannot hold a jury trial.
Please note, the Supreme Court only determines what constitutes a serious offense, meaning that they only entitle the jury to set the minimum standard. This means that a jury trial should be held only when an offense is serious according to the Court's standard. However, this does not restrict them from guaranteeing a ruling when crimes aren't sufficiently serious as per the provision of the federal standard.
Find a Van Nuys Criminal Attorney Near Me
The chances of minimizing your case from going to trial are usually high. All you need to do is hire a professional attorney who can help you file a pretrial motion and ensure that your motion is granted. At Leah Legal, we have passionately helped clients facing criminal allegations in Van Nuys, CA, reduce the chances of having their allegations move to trial and its surrounding areas. From the day you'll contact and hire us, we'll prepare the best defense strategies to challenge the evidence presented in court by the prosecutor. For more information, contact us at 818-484-1100 and schedule an appointment with us.