Client Facing Up to 40 Years in Prison Gets Probation

STEPHEN B.

Stephen came to me a couple years ago with some real problems. Stephen had a search warrant executed at his residence, and cybercrimes detectives found a whole bunch of child pornography on his computers.
To complicate matters even more, Stephen also chose to speak with law enforcement when they were there and made an entire confession as to what he had done, what he had downloaded, what he had looked at, and how he had gone about it. So, in addition to the simple possession of child pornography, he was also looking at a distribution of child pornography count. This was one of those cases where Stephen was using a peer-to-peer network, like a BitTorrent, a Gnutella, or an Ares.
These are applications or programs that are downloaded and are used to communicate into the dark web. It'll allow you into sites, and peer-to-peer systems that allow you access to things that you might not otherwise be able to access, if you were just using Google, or some other normal search engine. So, Stephen was looking at up to 20 years in prison on each one of the counts.
So, as we typically do here, we employed our proprietary 10 step Berlin Defense System. Additionally, we have designed a propriety defense system just for child porn cases. So, we very aggressively went after the search warrant, which had complete misstatements of fact in them. The search warrant, the search warrant affidavit, we went after the police reports themselves, and we put together a package, that we then took to the prosecutor. That package simply outlined, "Here are all the problems that you have. We've created so many problems with this particular detective, and what he has said in the search warrant affidavit, and what he has said in his police reports you may now have a problem ever using this detective again when we're done with him."
We laid it out in such a way, that it made it appear as if we were doing the prosecutor a favor by telling them this, and also educating them, about what they did not know. Here's a secret, most prosecutors really don't understand how to put on a child pornography case. They don't know how to prove the elements, they don't know how to lay the proper foundations. Most criminal defense attorneys don't know this, because the vast majority of criminal defense attorneys have never put on a child pornography case before. They usually waive the preliminary hearing and negotiate some type of deal or plead their client blind. Meaning, they're going to go in and plead their client guilty to the judge, and just cross their fingers and hope that the judge does right by them.
Well, through this education process ... I mean, we've had exhibits, and we are basically giving an education to the prosecutor about the peer-to-peer network system, and about the torrential downpour program that law enforcement uses. Things that she didn't have a clue about. But as we explained all of this to her, she realized she had a problem. So, instead of my client looking at 10 years in prison, which is what the original recommendation was, on an 85% crime. Meaning, the person has to do 85% of their time before they're eligible for parole, probation, good time credits, anything. I mean, you have to basically do day-for-day. Which, she thought was a great deal, because it was one fourth of what the maximum was. 40 years is being the maximum, 20 plus 20. So, it was this whole deal.
Well, she went from that 10-year offer, to offering my client a reduction to just a simple possession of child pornography charge, and a 10-year suspended sentence. Meaning my client didn't have to do a day in prison. It means that our client is now only a level one sex offender. He only has to register for a maximum 15 years. After 10 years of being on the registry, he's eligible to apply to be removed from the registry.
So, when he first came in, having confessed to the case, having child pornography found on his computer, having law enforcement, having downloaded it in a peer-to-peer network from his IP address, that's about as solid a case as you can get. From a prison time recommendation, to a straight probation sentence, on a level one offense.

That's one happy client.

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