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I assumed that someone is innocent until they are found guilty. And I also assumed that when they read us our rights and tell us that we will be appointed an attorney, we will be able to talk to them for more than 4 minutes in a two month period.( Never mind that you will see 5 different attorneys during these two months and those 4 minutes are divided between the four of them). And that these attorneys will laugh in the court room and tell you that you are screwed and they will discuss you in front of you in the court room while you are listening and the DA will tell your attorney how you are going to fry. I keep hearing that the San Bernardino courts are corrupt and the DA's office is corrupt and now I have witnessed it firsthand. I feel like I am in the book I am currently reading, A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, and that we have their justice system right here in the Inland Empire.

When among the incarcerated you will hear lots of criticism of the justice system. If you were assigned a public defender, they are charged with defending you and rely on your cooperation and the investigative reports supporting the charges. If you saw 4 attorneys for an average of 1 minute each, one would wonder what sort of impression you made on them during those short interactions?

Well, in the first place I have never been incarcerated. I have been involved with a case due to personal circumstances and I have witnessed the actions of the attorneys involved. I have talked with them and they have told me they would contact the defendant and have not done so except for a minute in court. There has been a new public defender each time the case has come to the courtroom. They are not familiar with the case and just fumble along. Then they talk to the defendant for the 1 minute period. How could the defendant even make an impression one way or the other in the time frame. And, I was under the, it would seem mistaken, idea that one is supposed to be defended regardless of how you might come across to your attorney. This whole process is shocking and scary! No wonder attorneys have such a bad name!

Use of "us", "we" and "you" being told "you are screwed" creates the impression that you are the victim of this experience. If not, I can only speculate what your role is to be included in all attorney/client interactions. I would hate to be at the mercy of a Public Denfender due to the fact that many inexperienced (read untrained) attorneys are hired at relatively low pay right out of law school. They have huge caseloads and are spread so thin that even good ones are limited in the time and effort they can put into a single case.

Attorneys have the right to meet with their clients outside the courtroom to discuss the case. If this has never happened, I wonder why not?

Well, I have been wondering the same thing about the attorney not meeting with his client. Not to mention, there have been five different attorneys on this case from the public defenders office. I have been called via telephone by an investigator for the defense and it has all gone nowhere. I think most of the people who might be arrested for something today could not afford the amount of funds it would take to defend yourself and would be stuck in this travesty of "justice". I am shocked and appalled by it all. No wonder there are 19 people who have been released from jail in Texas due to new DNA evidence.If you are an attorney, then I would say to you, do your job!And if you don't care about your job, then get a new profession. It can't always be all about the money you think you might earn after you leave the public defenders office or the gold stars you think you might earn for your reputation/career.

...and on the other side of the coin, I have wittnessed first hand the incompetence of the San Bernardino DA. I have been personally involved in a case where the defendant should have been put a way for a very long time, but was given an unbelievable deal. There is no justice. I have lost all confidence in our legal system, from law enforcment to judiciary.

Well, I think it is better to error on the side of reasonable doubt than to railroad someone into a jail sentence because their defensive attorneys are incompetent. I have lost all respect for our legal system as well. I believe the big problem is the TV shows that show all of the attorneys as competent and caring professionals. This has skewed our vision. It has been wishful, idealistic thinking on my part. I thought these attorneys would try to live and practice law by their oath. What a joke! I personally witnessed a San Bernardino DA laughing and joking about a case in the courtroom to another attorney. She was telling the attorney in a loud, cackling voice how she offered this guy a deal for one strike and since he turned it down, she found a way to get him on 3 strikes and send him away for a long time. I thought she was very unprofessional to say the least. Everyone in the courtroom could hear her. Was she trying to scare people? Was she trying to toot her own horn? I am all for justice when there is proper and fair representation. I have not seen any of that!

You obviously haven't watched Boston Legal. Denny Crane

Well, besides Denny! Seriously though, this is all a very sad situation. I am so very disappointed in our judicial system. Once again, it is all about who you might know and how much money you have. I don't have much money but I do know a few people, so I will try that route. When in Rome,...

Well, the best thing to do is to stay out of trouble. But I'm sure that when the cops arrested you they were just picking on you. Hey Stupid! Did you know that most cops won't mess with you unless you are doing something illegal. And why should my tax dollar go to pay for your attorney? 99% of the people arrested ARE guilty. Our judicial system is way to lenient.

Wow! Now you resort to name calling> Stupid? Did you read my thread all the way through? Now whose stupid!Bad karma for you!!!!!!!!!!!

Imagine - Cynthia goes thread by thread and name calls everyone. It's her MO. I really think you should call around and find a private defense attorney. There are some in downtown San Bernardino that I have heard take payments. Get the yellow pages and call the one's downtown by the court house and you may find one. I knew someone here in town who found one that took payments in downtown San Bernardino but the name escapes me now. No, it's not cheap but if the person is truely innocent it is better to have a good attorney and go without other things to have that then to end up in prison. IMO If the person is actually guilty and there is evidence of it and there is the possiblity that they will end up in jail anyway then it will be difficult to get the payments. Laywers aren't stupid. You won't resolve this here but rather by finding real help. Good Luck.

Thanks Shelli- Guess I was just venting and this was surely the wrong place. Thank you for your input. It seems there are a lot of angry people on these threads that just like to come in and stir all the pots. Trust me though, a lot of people have been arrested in error and it is very scary to me to witness what I have witnessed in this particular case. I have never been in jail and surely don't plan on being there, however shit happens to people sometimes and they act stupid and do stupid things. I just think each case needs to be heard on an individual bases and I really did think people were to be considered innocent until they were proven guilty with there day in court.Silly me!

OK, Here are the facts on how and why the system is what it is:

Background:
The DA is usually, if not always, an elected office. This means that the DA must continually seek re-election. In order to do so, the DA wants to be able to say that they have a high percentage of convictions.

The Public Defender's office is populated by Attorneys with limited experience and a caseload to choke a horse.

So having described this, here is how it fits together. The DA will almost always start by having a discussion with the PD to discuss a plea bargain. This way, if it is agreed to, the DA gets you convicted of a lesser chrage. They usually make the terms so good that you would have a hard time not accepting it. The PD is all too interested in this because it gets another case off their books.
The end result is that the PD usually will meet with a person for just a brief few minutes to try to get the defendant to accept the plea agreement. If the defendant doesn't accept the agreement and chooses to plead not guilty, there is no real point, in the PD's mind of having any long discussion because they know it may be as much as a year before one actually gets to trial.
In this system, the DA is able to claim a very high conviction rate at election time, even though most convictions were for far lesser crimes than a person really committed. The converse to that is that, folks who really are innocent usually accept the plea bargain because the PD points out that, if they plead to the lesser charge, they might only do 20 days, but if they take it to trial and lose, they might get three years because they will be convicted of the original charge. (those numbers show relationships not real times, obviously).

Example:
A guy gets caught driving a stolen car and every indication in evidence says he is the actual theif. When he is arrested, he is charged with Grand Theft Auto. This charge is a felony and would probably involve Prison time.
When it gets to the arraignment, the DA makes a deal to lower the charge to posessesion of stolen property. The defendant will probably do a couple of weeks, if they take that bargain. If they fight in court, and are convicted, they will have spent as much as a year until their trial and then they may do the maximum sentance.
There isn't much talking the PD has to do, it's in their interest and that of the DA to get you to plead to the lesser charge.
Then, after the arraignment, they go to lunch together while you take the bus to county jail.

This has been going on in every court in this country for many years and is no secret. Criminals take advantage of it every day. The real bad folks get less time, the innocent ones do time, and the DAs get their thing and the PDs get theirs.

By the way, this was explained to me in 1996 over Sushi by a Deputy DA friend of mine in a Southern California county which will remained unnamed.

Am I the only one who wonders how someone who is simply a witness could know exactly what went on for how many minutes each between the defendant and his/her attorney? The only ones who knows that are the people in the room at the time. There are a lot of reasons that a defender could be changed, including the defendant asking for or causing the change. But it is much easier to jump on what someone supposes is happening.

I spent a lot of time in the SB court, although the family court system, and I watched courtrooms cleared and people removed from hallways for speaking in regular voices about cases, or even what they were having for lunch. Bailiffs were constantly coming out of courtrooms and asking people to be quiet or leave. Courtrooms were cleared during trials (again, family court where children were involved) so there was no one to overhear anything. I witnessed lawyers being chastised. I enjoyed the services of a very expensive, but hard-working, attorney.

Are there bad attorneys and problems with the system? Yes. As long as humans are involved, this will happen. Is the evidence presented here enough to prove that the entire system is corrupt, or that even this case is an example of corruption? No. We don't know a thing about it, yet the knee jerks and people will keep this in mind as another example.

DevKon,
I don't think anything I said was intended to imply that the system is corrupt. I think it is simply what is expedient all the way round. The PD, gets their caseload reduced, the DA gets re-elected, the defendant gets off easier and the jail overcrowding is lessened. I doubt that any of those folks are really corrupt, but it is, in fact the norm in every county in California.
You are right though, we don't know anything about this case or, what anyone says with their attorney.

And in reality the OP only knows what has been told to him/her. Very few people ever say they did it. There is no benefit in doing so. We don't know the evidence or any other particulars including why they are suspected. Innocent people are arrested.

From: Scaryfast Sent: Friday, July 4, 2008 12:20 PM
Some of you may recall a particular Running Springs resident on Onocrest near Circle View who fired a weapon toward a neighbor’s house and then barricaded himself in his own home before being talked out by law enforcement. He is a convicted felon. He was charged with four felonies. In addition, he had been arrested by the CHP on 11/20/2007 for DUI and was charged with a penalty enhancement for his excessive blood alcohol level. The district attorney dismissed four of the six counts, including the separate and unrelated DUI charge. This individual plead guilty to felony cruelty to an animal and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. He was sentenced to a year in County jail with credit for time served. Was justice served?

This case was prosecuted by DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY NICOLE QUINTANA and DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY R HYNDS.

PC 246.3(A) (FELONY) DISCHARGE FIREARM W/GROSS NEGLIGENCE -- DISMISSED

PC 246 (FELONY) SHOOT AT INHABITED DWELLING/VEHICLE/ETC -- CONVICTED

PC 597(A) (FELONY) CRUELTY TO ANOTHER'S ANIMAL -- CONVICTED

PC 12021(A)(1) (FELONY) FELON/ADDICT/ETC POSSESS FIREARM -- DISMISSED

VC M23152(A) (MISDEMEANOR) DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE -- DISMISSED

VC M23152(B) (MISDEMEANOR) DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE W/0.08% OR HIGHER BLOOD ALCOHOL -- DISMISSED

I wonder who the public defender was in this case?