California Domestic Violence Attorney San Francisco Domestic Violence

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In a domestic violence criminal case you have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford to hire your own attorney, and in addition pay investigator and sometimes an expert witness’s fees, the judge will appoint a lawyer to represent you free of charge. In San Francisco, a Public Defender attorneys will be in court to represent you the first day you appear. In San Mateo County by comparison the first person a defendant sees is the courtroom bailiff from the Sheriff’s Department who hands them a complaint without the police report. Bailiffs there have been know to ask, “Do you want to plead guilty? You might as well.” In San Francisco the Public Defenders make an announcement about the dangers of self-representation and warn defendants not to represent themselves.

The judge may conduct a fee hearing when your case is over to see if you can pay all or part of your legal costs. If you earn over $900.00 a month you probably will have to spend at least $2,500.00 to hire your own attorney, twice that if your case goes to trial that can take up to a week or longer. Investigation costs can easily be another $1,000.00 and if you have need to hire a domestic violence expert you pay the psychologist’s professional fee.

In many cases the San Francisco Public Defenders will do a good job of representing you. They are on your side and don’t conspire with D.A.’s. Defenses are not always obvious from reading police reports that only contain the arresting officer’s version of the facts. Public Defenders in the domestic violence court are busy. You can’t expect them to answer all your questions while they are working in court. Make an appointment to see your public defender at their office at 555 7th Street. These lawyers handle over one hundred and twenty cases at the same time. They will pay more attention to your case if you go meet with them in person.

Defending domestic violence cases requires early front-end investigation of the facts in each case. The Public Defender’s office does not have the resources to investigate each case from the start. The office has only about five investigators to work on thousands of cases, from felony murder investigations on down. It is vital that an investigator talk to the witnesses as early as possible to gather initial statements because often witnesses’ statements become more damaging at trial. Some attorneys call the victim and other witnesses themselves, but what if these witnesses say something helpful to you that they later deny saying, or later change their story? Then your lawyer becomes a witness in your case, which is a problem. Only an investigator should be talking to the victim and witnesses.

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