Posts Tagged Dakota County Criminal Defense Attorney

How much does a criminal defense lawyer cost?

Criminal law in Minnesota is different from other areas of law, and that is important when considering who to hire as your criminal defense lawyer.  When you seek a lawyer for personal injury, or wrongful termination, employment issues, or other lawsuits, the question is most often “do I have a case?”  Your consultation involves a fact exploration to decide if you have a good case to begin litigation.  Attorneys often are paid out of settlement or damage, so their fee is dependent on the outcome When you are charged with a criminal offense,  and consult with a criminal defense lawyer, circumstances are very different.  It means there is already a case, and it has a court file number, and the State has a lawyer, and that means you need one too.  You are facing the most serious consequences a government can impose.  Jail.  Prison.  The collateral consequences of employment, licenses, etc. are also on the line. A good criminal defense lawyer charges flat fees.  That means, you pay them immediately, and they handle the case from the beginning to end, so you are paying in advance for future work.  That doesn’t mean the fee isn’t refundable.  It simply means that you are giving you criminal defense lawyer security to handle the entire case because they have to stick to it.  While this seems perhaps strange or risky, there is a reason behind it.  A criminal defense attorney does not need to determine whether litigation can be started.  It already has, and there is a lot of work to do quickly.  And if you are facing a criminal charge, the outcome is either (1) Conviction, (2) acquittal, (3) dismissal (4) plea to lesser charge.  Negotiating these outcomes, or trying a case to a jury, is time consuming, and requires a criminal defense lawyer with a reputation for jury trials.  The trouble of a jury trial, and the chances of the State to win or lose, really drive the result of a case.  Even if a trial doesn’t happen, aggressive representation, negotiation, and motion practice, and the clear threat of trial,  are all necessary for a criminal defense lawyer to achieve the optimal result.  A common mantra at The Law Office of Alex DeMarco is “a good lawyer prepares to beat a case, prepares for trial, but also prepares to lose.”  A savvy defense lawyer must always be prepared for trial, but must also be prepared for sentencing if they lose.  If a case cannot be won, sentencing itself is also an important phase that can make the difference between sitting in a cage, and staying free. The other reason for flat fees is that a criminal defense attorney cannot charge a fee for a specific outcome, and cannot withdraw from the case without a motion hearing before the court.  This is because criminal law involves constitutional rights, and the very freedom of a person.  So a criminal defense lawyer is very much bound to you until the very end of the… Read more {+}

Virginia Beach Police use forged DNA reports to obtain false confessions

According to a recent story from NPR, the Virginia Beach Police Department categorically lied to defendants to obtain false confessions in serious felony matters. “Investigators from Herring’s office found that the police department was using the forged documents as “supposed evidence” to try to get confessions, cooperation and convictions. The police department would lie and say the suspect’s DNA was connected with the crime and provide that in the document, which had forged letterhead and contact information, according to the investigation.” The sad truth:  Police officers are, within certain limits, allowed to coerce statements from defendants using false information.  False Confessions  are often the result of misstatements or outright lies by the police department.  Police can tell some lies to try to get a suspect to talk, but the Supreme Court in Minnesota in particular as warned that law enforcement agencies that do so regularly are “on thin ice.”  Increasingly, more judges in more jurisdictions are suppressing false confessions, meaning that it cannot be used against a defendant in a jury trial.  I have raised successful challenges to false information resulting in false confessions before.   Over my years of practice I have actually seen lies like this told to defendants, that “we have your DNA” or “your fingerprints are on the weapon” when in fact it wasn’t true.  In Minnesota I suppressed a confession by a juvenile to a criminal sexual conduct case in which the officers misrepresented to the defendant that the accusations “were not very serious” and they just wanted his “side of the story.”    I recently won a murder case in which  Aaron Zirzow of the Minneapolis Police Department Crime Lab was caught lying about their firearm tests and represented falsely that the test fired bullet casing “matched” the casing found at a murder scene.  The test was not even performed the same brand or materials used in the casing found at the scene, and the state strategically arranged microscopic photos and alignments to make it look as though the same marks were left.   However before even obtaining that false evidence, the Minneapolis Police represented to the defendant that his fingerprints and DNA were on the gun, which wasn’t true.  They obtained a sort of partial false confession from my client.  The jury found the defendant NOT GUILTY, despite the State calling over 20 witnesses.  The sole testimony presented by the defense was that of the defendant, and defendant had been accused of shooting someone before. If you’ve been accused of a crime and forced to confess because you thought it would go better for you, or if you’ve been told the forensic evidence in your case is hopeless to overcome, you need to hire a Criminal Defense Attorney, like myself, who practices in Minnesota.  I have the competence to dig into forensic evidence, consult experts, and learn the latest science and challenge the state’s evidence.  If you’ve been accused of a crime in Ramsey County, Hennepin County, Washington County, Dakota County, Rice County or anywhere… Read more {+}

St. Paul Criminal Defense Attorney Challenges SANE Exam

Resolving “He said, She said” with Junk Science, the terrifying unchecked testimony of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners. Alex DeMarco, a frequent Criminal Defense Attorney in Dakota County, had the opportunity and challenge of handling a criminal sexual conduct case in Dakota County recently.   The matter was charged out in 2014.  Alex DeMarco pushed it to trial three times, each time it being continued by other cases that were older or involved clients in custody.  On the third trial setting, the state dismissed the 3rd Degree Criminal Sexual Conduct case, and recharged it as a criminal sexual conduct in the first degree.  This was because, on the day of trial, over a year after his client was arrested, the state suddenly revealed the alleged “victim” had recorded her own sexual assault.   The State’s motion to amend the complaint was denied.   The State dismissed and re-filed, because the law now holds that a prosecutor can do so out of convenience and bad faith.   There is zero constraint on the state’s charging decision thanks to a recent Minnesota Supreme Court Opinion. Despite it being recharged to the highest degree possible, Alex DeMarco pushed it through to trial yet again.   Between the dismissed file and the new file, Alex DeMarco drafted over 400 pages of motions and memorandum and set the case up for trial.  That included overcoming the so-called “rape shield” law  , moving to suppress the statement of the defendant, and, important to this article, challenging the validity and limiting the testimony of a strange breed of State Expert called a “Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.” Ok that seemed like a lot of jargon, and we know the part that leaped out at you.   “But Alex, the victim recorded her own sexual assault.  The victim was heard saying “no, stop” several times.   What would you try that case?”  Answer:   Because who the heck records their own sexual assault?  Think about it.  How consistent is that with being sexually assaulted?   Ultimate result, despite the admission of this video evidence before a jury=  Hung jury.   No conviction, all counts.   The reason?  A Junk Science called a “Sexual Assault Nurse exam”, AKA “SANE” “S.A.N.E” or “SANE exam.”   While this is taken for granted by most lawyers, Alex saw through the fallacy of this science and exposed it to the jury.  The video was dark, grainy, did not show very much of anything regarding the conduct, and the fact the victim recorded a supposedly traumatic experience when she admitted there was no prior abusive or assault conduct by the defendant was weird and contrived.  Frankly, the case might have actually gone a different way if the State’s expert had not testified, but when she did, the jury ultimately could not believe the State’s case beyond a reasonable doubt.  If you’re facing a criminal sexual conduct charge in Minnesota, you need to hire an attorney that understands the latest up and coming junk science the State is… Read more {+}

Just say everything but “no” to implied consent.

“Finally, Petitioner argues Mr. Jones was subjected to an unreasonable warrantless search. Contained within this argument the court finds Petitioner’s more persuasive assertion: Mr. Jones did not refuse to take a blood or urine test because he stated he would take a test once a warrant was obtained.” Recent order in Rice County DWI Implied Consent case (Names changed). So we haven’t blogged DWI in awhile and we’re gonna blow through this like Terry Tate enforcing an office. First of all, for total newbs, we just dropped “implied consent” on you. What’s that? The law that says “hey by virtue of driving in Minnesota, you consent anytime to have yourself tested for booze or drugs whenever we want.” You’d probably remember this from your driver’s license application, if it was on there, which it’s not, but ignorance isn’t a defense, so on we go.  Bottom line, besides the criminal charges, “State vs. you”, there’s the civil case, “You vs. Commissioner of Public Safety”, which you need to file within 30 days of receiving your notice of revocation. If you don’t do that, your license is gone.  Period.  Hard and fast deadline.  That’s the two sides of DWI law, the criminal, the civil.  So this comes from that challenge to the license revocation.  How about the criminal?  It was so good, the test refusal charges, the serious DWI Charge, was dismissed by the prosecutor upon our motion before we even got to a hearing.  The state has now has to prosecute the matter with no field sobriety tests, no alcohol concentration, no evidence.  How did it get so good? Because this guy called an attorney who understood what he needed to know right there, right then. We’ve written previously regarding the bombshell that opened up DWI litigation three years ago in Missouri v. McNeely. If you’re facing a DWI and you haven’t heard of this court case, the one liner states: “In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so.”  That’s the Supreme Court of the United States; the highest Court in the land.  Blood, breath, and urine tests are all searches for fourth amendment purposes. (Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association). Some people thought it didn’t apply to Minnesota because we don’t force a test like Missouri.   Call it Minnesota nice, or laziness, whatever you want, but the bottom line is that a person is given a supposed “choice” on whether to take the test or not.  In other words, we say “we don’t wanna touch you or force you to do anything, but if you don’t subject yourself to this warrantless search, we’re gonna charge you with an even worse crime.”  So initially,some folks thought this didn’t apply to Minnesota.  Oops.  Two urine test cases from Minnesota get reversed by SCOTUS a few weeks later.  It suffices to say a lot of case law has… Read more {+}