Many criminal defendants rightfully believe that their cases aren’t serious and that it would be a waste of the court’s time and resources to carry on prosecution.
They apply common-sense reasoning to bureaucratic thinking and assume that the judge and the prosecutor will eventually see how frivolous the case is and dismiss it accordingly.
This type of naïve thinking stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates.
Unlike profit-driven, private companies, the criminal courts and their employees could not careless about efficiency or wasted resources.
It makes little difference to them whether your matter is resolved at its first hearing or whether it goes on for years–regardless of the charges.
Such defendants also falsely assume that the prosecutor, the judge, and everyone else handling the case are well aware of its details. They aren’t.
Your case, regardless of its severity, will get handled in an assembly-line fashion. On the day of your pretrial hearing, the prosecutor will review your file for a few moments–two or three minutes at most–and make his plea recommendation.
You can either accept the plea offer, propose your own plea to the judge, or take your case to trial. It’s as simple as that.
No attempts at minimizing the severity of your offense (whether justifiable or not) is going to change minds. And prolonging the proceedings with innumerable continuances will not result in the prosecutor dropping the case with exasperation.
Moreover, if you’re bold enough to take your case to trial, you can be 100% certain that the prosecutor will not back down. Instead, he’ll be ready and willing to “waste his time” on you.
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