Role of an Attorney in a Stamford Shoplifting Case

When facing a shoplifting charge, an attorney can help an individual by making sure to preserve the right types of evidence and ensure that this evidence is thoroughly investigated.

Beyond this, there are many other roles that an attorney must take on when defending a Stamford shoplifting charge. To best understand these roles and to begin defending your charge, contact an experienced Stamford shoplifting lawyer immediately.

Gathering Evidence

There are many initial steps that a lawyer will take when beginning to defend an individual’s shoplifting charge. First, they will help establish a story through the available evidence.

Experienced attorneys, having done these types of cases and thought through these problems before, will look for certain types of evidence. Additionally, they know how to potentially find those pieces of evidence and use them to the client’s advantage.

Understanding the Process

The other role an attorney has in a Stamford shoplifting case is to help the client understand the process and what options are available to them throughout the case process.

This is so that the individual can make the most informed decisions about punishment to accept and what forms of punishment or rehabilitation may be available under the circumstances.

Finding Probable Cause

At the arraignment, the accused individual is presented with the charges and the accusations that are being made against them. The attorney has a few roles at that point. The first is to make sure that there is enough information to support a finding of probable cause.

A person charged with a crime does not need to have evidence against them or establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That happens at the trial phase. Initially, to have a charge put against the person, there only needs to be enough evidence to establish that there is probable cause that the person committed a crime.

Probable cause means that, based on the available facts, is there any way consistent with the evidence that that the person could be convicted of this crime. If the answer to that is yes, there is probable cause. Nevertheless, it is the role of an attorney in a Stamford shoplifting case to be looking to make sure that there is enough evidence to meet that lower threshold.

Avoiding Jurisdictional Defects

The second role of a lawyer in a Stamford shoplifting case is to make sure that there are no jurisdictional defects, meaning that the person was in the place that the crime is being charged within the appropriate period of time.

Determining Bond

Another function of an attorney as it relates to Stamford shoplifting cases is in regard to the amount of bond that is set and/or the conditions that may be placed on the defendant while released prior to a trial happening.

The bond is an amount of money that must be posted to ensure that the person will appear in court. The more serious the offense, the higher the bond will be. The idea is that if the person is going to be released in the public, there must be some sort of commitment over the person’s head.

This is so that if the person does not continue appearing for court or steps out of line and violates some sort of condition of the court, there is a financial incentive for the person stay in line while the process is going on.

The attorney will help present that argument to the court to try to show the judge that their client does not have a lot of reasons to not appear for their court case or reason to cause a serious concern to the public safety. This would all go toward favoring the release of the defendant with a bond that is as low as possible.