Taking A Look At Common Criminal Charges In the United States
From mounting a defense against sex crime charges to protecting your rights in the aftermath of a DUI charge, the typical criminal defense lawyer leads a busy life. But a criminal defense lawyer is most certainly someone that you want to have on your side in the event that you are charged with a crime. Being charged with a crime can be a jarring and frightening thing, and the aftermath of such an event can change your life for good – whether you like it or not. Representing your self with the best criminal defense attorney at least gives you a chance to fight the charges or at least reduce them, and is something that you and every other person who has been charged with a crime has legal right to, even if they cannot, on their own, afford such a lawyer as a sex crimes defense attorney or drug possession lawyer.
Sex crimes and the need for a defense against sex crime charges are probably far more common than the average person even realizes, with most sex crimes and need for defense against sex crime charges related to cases of sexual assault and prostitution. Sexual assault on its own is at record highs, with more than eighty six sexual assaults reported for every grouping of ten thousand people that live in the state of Ohio alone. These sex crimes are to be taken very seriously and the accused of such a crime are likely to face a trial by judge or by jury if a settlement with the accuser is not able to be reached. In such cases, a competent lawyer will need to compile a defense against sex crime charges – and even then, a defense against sex crime charges might not be enough to do away with the charges entirely. However, a good enough defense against sex crime charges will be able to at least reduce the proposed sentence and prevent the client charged with said crime from being charged with the maximum possible sentence – at least in some cases, as there are most certainly those that are incredibly difficult to defend as there is so much evidence to condemn the accused. A defense against sex crime charges is essential and without any defense against sex crime charges, a conviction is more likely than not.
However, mounting a defense against sex crime charges is not the only responsibility that criminal defense lawyers are tasked with. Many criminal defense lawyers often focus more on drug related charges, in fact, and do not spend much time at all in the creation of a defense against sex crime charges. Drug law violations are incredibly commonplace, not only in the aforementioned state of Ohio but in the entirety of the country. In fact, in the year of 2016 alone, there were more than one million and five hundred thousand arrests made by the FBI, a number that has remained high in the two years that have followed since. The vast majority of these arrests – more than eighty four and a half percent of them – were because of possession of a controlled substance, often with the intent of the guilty party to sell.
And there is no doubt about it that drugs have long been a problem here in the United States, a country caught up in a raging opioid epidemic. Drugs, particularly opioids like heroin and, more and more consistently, fentanyl, have become even more dangerous and even more widespread in the past few years. Epidemic rates of overdoses are occurring, and more and more people are becoming addicted to such drugs (among many others) than ever before. Lives are being lost and even among those who survive, life is often forever changed. For these reasons and more, drug offenses, even more minor ones, are taken very seriously by law enforcement officials here in the United States.
A criminal defense lawyer will be critical in the outcome of your case if you have been charged with a crime, particularly one that is highly skilled and experienced in your crime.
