Criminal defense that starts with the why

Cases like that aren’t usually won by presenting your version of the facts against theirs. They’re won by uncovering and exposing the reasons the other side is wrong. Being able to see the case from the perspective of every person involved in it is what gives you insight into what really happened, and what allows for far better advocacy — with the prosecutor, the judge, or your jury.

I had a client charged with two counts of attempted murder. He was accused of slashing two throats in less than twenty-four hours. That is extremely hard to defend, because the jury has to believe self-defense twice, against two separate people. But we dug deep and exposed a connection between them, and it changed everything in the case. When someone attacks you and you successfully fight them off, their loved ones may come after you the following day, forcing you to defend yourself again. That why saved an innocent man’s life, when he was facing two separate life sentences.

I have used this approach in countless other cases. I’ve had a client charged with murder walk out acquitted. I’ve had a three-strikes DUI with serious injuries collapse because the state couldn’t prove our client caused the collision. Domestic violence charges have been dismissed, reduced, or tried to acquittal where we identified the reasons the accuser was lying or exaggerating, or the reasons the police were wrong. The same in sex cases, robberies, burglaries, and many more. What you can’t see at first but can come to understand, you can explain — and that one thing can save someone’s freedom, and someone’s life.

The second kind of why is harder to see, and it does a lot more damage. The veteran who came home from a deployment and was never treated for what happened to him. The mother who started drinking after she buried her son. The young man with a mental illness nobody ever diagnosed, arrested three times now for the same behavior.

That why isn’t in the file at all, and nobody in the building is assigned to find it. The prosecutor has a charge. Probation has a form. The court has a calendar. So the case moves, the person takes a deal, and a year and a half later they’re back — because nothing that caused their case was ever touched, or if it was, it was only scratched at the surface. That’s what keeps people in this system for a decade. Sometimes for generations.

And then there is a third thing almost nobody puts on: who you actually are. People assume character is something you raise at sentencing, after you’ve already lost. It isn’t. In California a jury can be told that evidence of your character — for honesty, for nonviolence, for peacefulness — may on its own be enough to raise a reasonable doubt. That instruction exists. Most lawyers never earn the right to ask for it, because using it means knowing a client well enough to find the people who will come and say it under oath.

So we ask about your life. Where you work and who you work for. Whether you coach, served in the military, or show up at the same church every Sunday. What forty years of your record looks like next to one bad night. Who would take a day — or sometimes weeks — off work to sit in a courtroom for you, and what they would say there if called to the stand.

I have seen how much this matters when a jury decides whether to believe the charges. Jurors don’t know anyone in your case, so hearing from people who know you is important social proof that you can be trusted. It affects what the prosecutor is willing to offer. It affects what a judge sees when choosing between a program, a diversion motion, or a prison cell. A charge is a photograph taken by a stranger on your worst day. Our job is to show the court the rest of the album.

I started this firm to change the way we defend people facing criminal charges. To find out not only what happened but why, and to solve the reasons behind your legal problem in a way that makes everyone see you differently. To identify the one thing that changes everything in your case, and focus our efforts on it.

That’s much harder than pleading a case out. It takes an investigator, a research attorney, doctors and counselors who will testify, and a lawyer willing to try the case when the offer isn’t good enough.

We call this approach purpose-driven criminal defense. What it means in practice is that we always start with the why — and then we follow the path the why reveals.