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Gina Tennen
Executive Managing Attorney.
Focus: Serious Sex Crimes and Drug Crimes, Fraud, Organized Crime, and White Collar Cases.
State and Federal

E. Thomas Dunn, Jr.
Certified Criminal Law Specialist and Appellate Specialist, Of Counsel

Louis Pilato
Senior Attorney, Of Counsel.
Focus: Sex Crimes, Drug Crimes, DUI's and all criminal cases

Featured Attorney

Attorney Carrie Jourdan was featured on 60 Minutes for her landmark case that resulted in the first ever overturn of a Death Penalty in Mississippi on the basis of DNA evidence.

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Public Defenders vs Private Attorneys:
Whom to Hire?

Frankly speaking, the best private attorneys and public defenders are those who win the highest number of cases and satisfy their clients with the best case results. Public defenders don't release their case results and their performance in court is unknown. It is in your best interest to choose a criminal defense attorney who gets the best outcome for his clients' cases, not an attorney getting the highest recommendation or opinion of other attorneys or judges. The opinions of other attorneys or judges can always be influenced by relationships and personal meetings. It makes total logical sense to hire a criminal defense attorney, whether a public defender or private attorney, who gets the most successful results on his cases and wins the most in the same manner a top athlete is the one that has the most victories.

Common sense dictates that some experienced public defenders are probably good and some are probably not as good, as in every profession or sport. However, a defendant has no way of knowing which public defenders are better than others. If you do choose to get a public defender, you cannot choose which one; the court assigns one to you regardless of your preference or if the public defender has experience with your type of case.

Numerous commentaries and articles exist on choosing between getting a free public defender vs. hiring a private attorney, especially for criminal cases. Public defenders and court appointed lawyers are many times synonymous terms used to describe attorneys who work for the government and are available for free for those who meet certain financial criteria. There is a false belief that a public defender has the time and resources to put up a fierce fight for you and give you effective representation for your legal matters. The truth is many public defenders have massive case loads and very little time to work on your case. The constricted amount of time overburdened public defense offices have to work on your case directly affects the victory or downfall of your case results and your life.

A private attorney, working as part of a team of criminal defense lawyers and experts who have the time, motivation, and specialized resources to dedicate to your case and thoroughly communicate with you is going to maximize the capability of having the best results. It is probably safe to assume that providing you with the finest legal counsel is the intention and responsibility of all criminal defense attorneys, whether private or public. Unfortunately, governmental budget constraints and an excessively burdened judicial criminal court system is the reality public defenders and the defendants relying upon them must deal with.

You are taking a huge risk when deciding to get a public defender or court appointed lawyer. The court appointed attorney or public defender assigned to you may not have the expertise or little or no experience at all in the criminal charges you face. Public defenders or private attorneys who don't have sufficient experience defending criminal cases will not have a full understanding of the rules of evidence in a criminal court room, especially if they don't have experience with the particular crime or charge you have been accused of. They will have difficulty finding the strengths and weaknesses of your case and going to trial in the court room. They will also have meager or very little credibility plea bargaining for you, which is a great advantage for the prosecutor.

Many private attorneys and law students, who have no experience at all, go work as a public defender to gain experience. However, law schools are not what the real world is like; a classroom is drastically different from criminal court. A public defender can be a brand new attorney or law student going to court for the first time. This is a dangerously bad scenario for a defendant and should not be taken lightly. It is very likely the public defender would be more frightened than you in a criminal court room. It is also likely, he or she will be easily intimidated by a prosecutor with years of criminal law experience with trials and plea bargains and in the court room. When your liberty and life is at risk of being stripped away, you do not want to be in a situation such as this.

There is an extreme amount of value had by an experienced criminal defense attorney, who has provided legal counsel to hundreds of criminal cases, that cannot be put into words or even attach a price tag to. After all, you shouldn't put a price tag on your life. A criminal defense attorney's experience and expertise is essential when making choices and the right moves while your criminal case is being processed; from the very beginning to the very end, and especially when choosing to take your case to trial or plea bargaining. At LibertyBell Law Group, a team of criminal defense attorneys, master investigators and criminal law experts thoroughly review you case and pool their experience and expertise. This gives you the advantage of having an exceptionally fierce criminal defense team fighting for you from day one.

Every stage of a criminal case, from the very beginning to the end, has an effect on the end result. Prosecutors can bypass certain criminal court processes even before you have been formally charged at an arraignment.

An inexperienced private attorney or public defender may not even know it. A public defender may not have the time to even look at your case early on. For the prosecutor, that can be an enormous advantage and a disadvantage to the defendant. Furthermore, you may not even be aware of what is happening behind the scenes. Sometimes criminal court procedures are not required and thus prosecutors are not obligated to inform the defendant of them. This is just one example of why hiring a private attorney experienced in criminal defense is absolutely vital.

Your criminal defense team at LibertyBell Law Group will dissect and assemble the evidence to establish a solid and winning defense. LibertyBell Law Group's criminal defense attorneys are masterminds at finding holes in the prosecutors' cases. Our private criminal attorneys have superior expertise in interviewing witnesses, victims and police. Working on your case from the very beginning and knowing your case from the inside out and all possible scenarios enables our criminal attorneys to effectively defend you in court and get you the best case results.

You may find a public defender or a court apponted lawyer with a light work load and be extremely lucky, but the chance of that is negligible. Excessive case loads are a common wide problem among state public defenders' offices and research has proven this. Research done by the Justice Policy Institute has shown cases represented by public defenders result in more jail time and less justice. Here is the downloadable JPI report on our overloaded criminal justice system. Many public defenders try to juggle over two hundred cases. That is way over the maximum number of cases recommended by the American Bar Association, which recommends that any attorney should not handle over one hundred cases. Public defenders usually handle over 300 cases in Los Angeles County, California. Public defenders may be very passionate about their jobs and have the best intentions. However, they may be overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases and jeopardize their client's constitutional right to effective representation in criminal court.

Don't gamble your life on an already extremely burdened criminal court system that could land you in jail with heavy court fines and a criminal record that will affect the rest of your life. You may lose your job and severely hurt your future or have no future at all when you place your life in the hands of a public defender or court appointed lawyer. Give yourself a criminal defense attorney who is meticulously dedicated to representing you and winning your case. Give yourself the opportunity to have a higher quality of life.

Act early to get the best results for your case. Talk to a criminal defense expert now. I urge you to call 855-LAW-PRO1 now.

LibertyBell Law Group would like to commend and extend a special thank you to all the public defenders and court appointed attorneys that struggle with heavy case loads and few resources. Public defenders and court appointed attorneys play a valuable role for those that cannot afford to hire a private criminal defense attorney. All the LibertyBell Law Group criminal attorneys highly respect them as their peers. However, as unfortunate as it is, our criminal justice system is so overloaded to the point of causing state and federal agencies to have severe budget deficits. It's not because crime is up; we are currently experiencing the lowest crime rates in 45 years, since 1966, reports the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. Our overcrowded prisons due to criminal justice policies are the major cause of budget deficits, as a result of the "war on drugs," "tough on crime," and mandatory sentencing laws.

Links to Research and Reports:
Oct. 2010 National Assessment of Public Defender Caseloads by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
The latest comprehensive report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics on State Public Defender Programs and County-based and Local Public Defender Offices published in September 2010 based on data from 2007. Here you will find all data associated with the BJS State Public Defender Programs Research.

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