Like everything else in this world, you get what you pay for. She'll be assigned a legal aid attorney who will barely represent her interests and won't make any kind of decent argument for leniency. She's at the mercy of the court system............not a good thing under any circumstances.

If she had the funds for a decent attorney, her prospects improve dramatically. He frames the case for the prosecutor/judge to show her in the best possible light and, hopefully, gets a much reduced (maybe suspended???) sentence.

legal aid attorney? like the guy in "My Cousin Vinny"? I would be scared

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Ben
1987 190d 2.5Turbo

They are basically worthless and the judge will show no sympathy for such folks, unfortunately. She could get 5-10 years in jail without proper representation.

That's the most important thing to do at this point..............find an attorney and pay him.

not entirely fair to portray all legal aid attorneys as worthless. Depending on region, legal aid jobs are some of the hardest to get and subject to intense competition from highly motivated intelligent people who actually want to help other people.

I say this because my sister, a lawyer in NYC went through about 2 years of an application process to get into a legal aid job.

She said it was way harder and way more competitive to get into this job than applying to a much better paying (like 3 times the salary) corporate job at some of the top firms in town.

The legal aid jobs are low paying, but are subject to intense competition because of court time and actual trial practice as a lawyer, which you will see a lot of, and there are usually limited positions and money for such jobs.

All this said, this is in NYC where there are dozens or legal aid lawyers based on the population, locally where I live I believe there are like 5 in the whole state, which has one 10th the population of NYC. In benhogans region could be a completely different standard of quality, but I wouldn't write off all court appointed lawyers simply because they happen to be court appointed.

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With what? She is broke and probably spent her last few bucks on the next score which was taken away.

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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
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91 Vette with 383 motor
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Didn't he win the case?

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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow