Quote:
Originally Posted by curves2000
I would be fascinated to know from a defense attorney perspective how the thinking goes when they ask a client if they did in fact commit the alleged crime. How does the conversation go about pleading guilty and minimizing jail time/charge risk? The crown won't always offer plea deal but I think a lot of times defendants and their lawyers try and fight the good fight when an outcome has a high likelihood of conviction when the smarter play may be to plead to a lesser charge.
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There truly is no one size fits all approach to preparing a criminal defence file and unfortunately this is one area where I will not reveal much about my practice.
That said, the generic response is it almost always depends on what we see in disclosure of the prosecution case that guides what we ask and when.
As to getting to the decision to plead guilty...sometimes there is 4K quality video of the accused committing the crime and no legal obstacle to it being admissible. Those cases tend to get very quickly to a guilty plea after we watch the video.
Sometimes we see major gaps and problems in the evidence and can see a high likelihood the Crown will fail to prove a case.
And there is everything between.
For sure there are times an accused exercises their right to a trial in spite of legal advice to resolve...and times where the opposite occurs as well.
And contrary to what is a common misconception, we often have to get our client's version of events...it really depends on the trial strategy / theory of the defence.
One thing to keep in mind though, is that the vast majority of cases do not go to trial and will be resolved (I think the percentage of criminal cases coming into the system resolved by way of trial has always been around 10%):
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/...cc-epd/p1.html