An eloquent guilty plea
Earlier this week I was in a lower court in Horry County for several hours, waiting to enter a plea to reckless driving with one of my clients. As we waited, I watched in shock as my colleagues stood with their clients who were pleading guilty to driving under the influence, one after the other. Who am I to criticize? I don't know, and I'm not going to name names or the court that we were in. Maybe there were extenuating facts in all of these cases that justified the attorneys lying down and pleading out their cases.
It's not that I don't know and appreciate that every defendant makes his own decision to plead guilty or take his case to trial - and if they do they are entitled to have a lawyer standing with them. I think its the fact that these were attorneys that I know charge healthy fees and, other than the impression I received from sitting through guilty pleas this week, I consider them to be excellent attorneys and have the utmost respect for them. I also did not hear anything in the recitation of facts by the prosecutor that would have precluded these cases from going to trial - one of them was a case with no datamaster result.
One thing that I considered as I watched was the things that I know many attorneys (not necessarily the ones I watched this week) tell their clients. I believe that the most important aspect of an attorney-client relationship is trust, and I believe that you have to be honest with your clients, regardless of what they want to hear. For example, if you are going to plead guilty to DUI 1st offense, you do not need a lawyer to do that. With the average DUI first offense, if you walk into court in Horry County with no lawyer and plead guilty, you will most likely get the minimum sentence and fine. Whether you have a lawyer standing with you or not, following a guilty plea to DUI first offense you will most likely receive the minimum jail sentence of 48 hours (most likely time served), and the minimum fine. You will also have your license suspended, you will be required to enroll in ADSAP before you can drive again, and when your license is reinstated you will have to carry SR-22 insurance for 3 years, all of which will cost you thousands of dollars.
If you pay top dollar for a lawyer to represent you on your DUI, expecting them to fight your charge and test the state's evidence, you should be prepared to take your case to trial. If, when your case comes up on the roster, your attorney tells you that they've worked out a deal where you will get a minimum fine and no jail time if you enter a plea, but if you go to trial you will go to jail, it's possible that you've been had by an attorney that never had any intention to fight your case. An honest advocate should tell you at the beginning that you can get that wonderful deal without paying him or her the big bucks, and that if you retain them you are paying for a trial. If you are convicted at trial you could be sentenced to up to 30 days on a first offense, or you may receive a fine - in my opinion a fair magistrate would not punish a defendant for insisting on his constitutional right to a jury trial, but there are no guarantees that you will not go to jail. If you are not willing to take your case to trial if that is what it comes to, there are lawyers who charge minimum prices to stand with you in court while you plead guilty.
I heard some eloquent guilty pleas this week, they were truly impressive. But those people still walked out of the courtroom with DUI's on their record and their pocketbooks significantly lighter with nothing to show for it.
