How Innocent Defendants Handle Criminal Charges

Being accused of a crime you didn't commit can be shocking, stressful, humiliating, and expensive. While it's natural to become emotional, remaining calm and thinking carefully before speaking to anyone—especially law enforcement—is crucial. Your first contact should generally be a criminal defense attorney who can guide you through the process and protect your rights.

How Do Innocent People End Up Facing Criminal Charges?

People get things wrong all the time, including witnesses, victims, and police. Unfortunately, it's also possible that someone purposely makes false accusations or misleading statements against another.

An innocent person could face criminal charges for any number of reasons, including:

• mistaken identification by an eyewitness or victim
• misidentification due to identity theft or having the same name and birthdate as the culprit
• police report errors
• flawed forensic analysis
• official misconduct by police or prosecutors, or
• false or misleading accusations.

Prosecutors often make charging decisions based on a police report and investigative notes that might contain limited or incorrect information. These preliminary reports might miss crucial facts due to witness misstatements, deliberate lies, or officer errors and biases.

Immediate Steps to Take If You're Falsely Accused of a Crime

If you face false accusations, here are some steps you can take to protect yourself.

Limit Communications With Police, Investigators, and Others

It's typically best not to offer up any information to police or investigators or to communicate with the accuser until you've spoken to a lawyer. If police want to question you, tell them you invoke your right to remain silent and want to speak with a lawyer. Many people think that an innocent person has nothing to lose by speaking up and telling the truth, but facts can get twisted around or confused. You can end up causing yourself more harm than good. For this reason, it's also important not to speak with the media or post anything on social media.

Secure Legal Representation

Hire a criminal defense attorney or request a public defender as soon as possible. While you don't necessarily want to rush a decision on hiring a defense attorney, you should make it a priority.

Avoid Contact With Victims and Witnesses

Maintaining your distance from the victim, the victim's family, and witnesses is important. You might be eager to speak to the victim, but even well-meaning attempts to resolve the situation yourself can backfire. Your efforts might look like witness tampering or intimidation. A victim could also accuse you of threatening them. Talk to your lawyer first and be cautious about what you say to victims, witnesses, and even family and friends.

Document and Preserve Evidence

While details and memories are fresh in your mind, take notes and gather evidence that could prove your innocence. You might want to collect items such as receipts, phone logs, security camera footage, GPS tracking records, and credit card statements. It's also helpful to write down dates, times, places, and names of potential witnesses.

Understanding and Asserting Your Legal Rights

In the American legal system, defendants have the presumption of innocence. It's the prosecutor's job to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Defendants don't need to prove their innocence. You also have constitutional rights, and it's important to keep those rights in mind and assert them as best you can. These constitutional rights include the following.

Right to Remain Silent

The Fifth Amendment provides the well-known privilege against self-incrimination. It's advisable to invoke your right to remain silent until you speak with an attorney.

Right to Legal Representation

You have the right to have an attorney present during police questioning. Police must stop their questioning if you request a lawyer. If you can't afford an attorney, the government must provide you with one. You also have the right to have a criminal defense attorney or a court-appointed lawyer represent you throughout the criminal case.

Right to a Speedy and Public Trial

Criminal charges and cases can't drag on forever. You can ask the court for a speedy trial. Trials must also be public to promote accountability and ensure fairness.

Right to Confront Witnesses

In any criminal trial, the accused has the right to face their accusers, whether that's the alleged victim or witnesses. It's the jury's job to evaluate their credibility.

How Criminal Defense Attorneys Handle Charges Against Innocent Clients

A good defense attorney can help their client navigate the criminal justice system. It's also possible they can get the charges dropped or the case dismissed.

Intervene Before Charges Are Filed

If the facts are suitable, some lawyers will try to intervene before the prosecution even files charges. This might involve contacting the arresting or investigating officer before the case gets to the prosecution, or getting in touch with the prosecutor before the filing decision is made. Particularly in less serious cases, the defense attorney might be able to explain the incident such that the case never sees a courtroom.

Seek Dismissal After Charges Are Filed

More often, the lawyer needs additional information and waits until the prosecutor files the criminal charges. The lawyer will then have a better and more complete understanding of all relevant factors, including your version of the events and what's in the police report.

Your lawyer might decide to investigate the incident further and gather additional evidence (including witness declarations). Presenting this information to the prosecutor might persuade them to dismiss the charges. For example, your defense lawyer might discover facts showing the events could not have unfolded the way an alleged victim or witness claims.

On the flip side, your lawyer might make a strategic decision not to share information too quickly.

Challenge the Evidence in Pretrial Motions

It takes a while to get to trial. During the pretrial stage, your lawyer will review the prosecution's evidence, identify potential weaknesses, and develop defense strategies. Some of these strategies take the form of challenging evidence or discrediting witnesses during pretrial motions or preliminary hearings. For instance, your attorney might argue that the police conducted an illegal search and ask the court to toss the evidence found during the search. Or, the attorney might rigorously cross-examine a witness during a preliminary hearing and expose inconsistencies in their statements. If the prosecution loses a key witness or evidence in the case, they might drop the charges.

Wait Out a Weak Case

Sometimes the best move for the defense is to do nothing. It can take several months for the prosecution to learn that there's insufficient evidence to convict the defendant. A witness might recant their story, or the prosecutor discovers credibility issues or hidden motivations. For instance, the witness might have a history of false accusations, or an alleged victim could be motivated by a family issue, like child custody. Waiting for the case to unravel takes patience, but it can turn out to be an effective strategy.

Trial Considerations for Innocent Defendants

While going to trial in hopes of an acquittal is an option for the wrongly accused, criminal trials can be risky, expensive, and tremendously stressful. A good attorney will try to resolve the case before it goes to trial. But if a trial becomes inevitable, work with your lawyer to develop a strong defense strategy.

Your lawyer can help you determine if you have a strong alibi defense or self-defense claim. Other defense strategies include:

• challenging the reliability of forensic evidence
• demonstrating mishandling of evidence
• highlighting deficiencies in a police report or investigation, or
• challenging an eyewitness's identification.

Defendants are entitled to an acquittal if just one juror decides reasonable doubt exists as to guilt.

Do Innocent People Ever Plead Guilty?

Yes, it happens. The prosecution might have overwhelming evidence that leaves the innocent person and their lawyer concerned about going to trial. In this case, it might be appealing to work things out through plea bargaining, rather than being convicted at trial.

Some states permit another option—allowing a defendant to plead "no contest." With a no-contest plea, the defendant doesn't plead guilty but admits the prosecution has enough evidence to convict. Basically, the defendant agrees not to contest the charges. While there's no admission of guilt, a no-contest plea has the same effect as a guilty plea. There will be a conviction, a sentence, and a criminal record. It's very important to weigh all the consequences of a no-contest plea with your lawyer before deciding on this course of action.

The Importance of Legal Representation When You're Wrongly Accused

Hiring or requesting an attorney is not an admission of guilt. The criminal justice system is complex and stressful. Having effective legal representation is not only essential, it's a constitutional right—one that the guilty and innocent should use to protect their rights.