Qualities to be expected in a Good Attorney.
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Interviewer: What would you do if you were accused of a crime? How would you advise people to choose an attorney? What signs should they look for to tell them they are speaking to the right attorney for them?
Robert Callahan: One thing that surprises me is how people, through politeness, do not ask the hard questions, which are necessary, when they are hiring an attorney. So, I see people hire these attorneys that have maybe only tried two jury trials in their entire career or have only been an attorney for three or four years. So, they only have like 20 trials ever and only two of those are jury.
My advice is to ask the hard questions. How long have you been an attorney? Where do you practice? What type of experience do you have with this particular criminal charge I am facing? What has been the outcome of the cases in which you have represented people? How many jury trials have you tried? How many felony bench trials have you tried? When you ask these hard questions, the experience level of the attorney who you are thinking about hiring becomes apparent.
Interviewer: I am sure most attorneys would probably try to turn it around, get irritated, and maybe try to intimidate the person to make them back off.
Robert Callahan: What they will do is avoid actually answering your question. You say, "Well, how many felony jury trials have you done?" They will say, "Well, I did one last year where there was a finding of not guilty because of this, and I have been doing this for 15 years, and they did not actually answer your question.
Case Studies.
Interviewer: Would you describe a couple of recent case studies and how they ended up? Maybe pick a couple recent ones that the odds were pretty stacked against the person, but you prevailed. What happened?
Robert Callahan: Last week I represented a young man who was stopped in his car for speaking on a cellphone, and what happened was that the police placed him under arrest for driving on a revoked license. After they placed him into custody, they searched the van that he was in, and they found some counterfeit, forged US Treasury tax returns. They found about 20 false or forged credit cards. They found a fake ID and the names of the credit cards with the young man's picture on it along with some other illegal documentation. We were talking about the 4th amendment constitutional right that US citizens have against illegal searches and seizures. I argued that the traffic stop was improper.
The person who was driving the car was driving on what is called a restricted driving permit. His driver's license was, in fact, revoked prior to that for driving under the influence, but he had received what is called a restricted driving permit. The police officers claimed that he admitted to driving outside the bounds of the restricted driving permit, and, therefore, they arrested him for that reason. The restricted driving permit allowed him to drive for purposes of employment. They claimed that he made a statement saying that he just went to his cousin's house and was not working at the time.
Basically, when I obtained the police reports and a transcript of the preliminary hearing, I was able to impeach the police officers and show the judge that the defendant’s alleged statement did not really take place. So, I was able to cross-examine the police officers with the fact that the statement that they claimed he made was not contained in any of the reports. This directly relevant statement that he was driving outside the bounds of employment was not in the arrest report. It was not in the original incident case report. It was not in the traffic report. Nowhere did the officers document this confession that the defendant was driving outside the bounds of his restricted driving permit. The judge found on his behalf and suppressed all the evidence inside the van. For that reason the state no longer has a case against him. He was facing charges of identity theft, credit card fraud, and forgery. That case is going to be dismissed because the evidence will be excluded pursuant to the exclusionary rule, and our motion to suppress evidence was granted.