INTRODUCTION
At My Criminal Defense, Criminal Defense Attorney Stephen R. Brodsky and his team of San Diego based attorneys, licensed professional investigators and experts provide a full range of criminal defense and administrative legal services to San Diego County and Southern California residents. For the last 25 years, the legal team has created and implemented successful defense strategies in misdemeanor and felony cases in the state and federal court systems in Southern California.
WE OFFER PROFESSIONAL LEGAL DEFENSE SERVICES IN THE FOLLOWING CRIMINAL LAW PRACTICE AREAS:
Theft and fraud (including petty theft, grand theft, shoplifting, embezzlement, credit card fraud, worker’s compensation fraud, insurance fraud, medical and welfare fraud, automobile theft, residential burglary and commercial burglary, elder financial abuse, child financial exploitation, robbery)
Assault & battery (including assault & battery crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury)
Other violent crimes (including arson, kidnapping, robbery, mayhem, torture, gang violence)
Domestic Violence (including domestic violence battery, Injury to spouse or significant other, false imprisonment, kidnapping, stalking, annoying or harassing phone calls, child abuse and endangerment, elder abuse and restraining order violations)
Sex Crimes (including rape, child molestation/sex abuse/ lewd acts, indecent exposure, prostitution, Failure to register as sex offender, child pornography, internet sex crimes)
Driving Crimes (including hit and run, reckless evasion of police pursuit, driving on suspended license, vehicular homicide)
DUI’s & Drunk Driving (including felony injury, felony multiple DUI priors, DUI causing death, DUI drugs)
Federal Crimes (including narcotics conspiracy, marijuana smuggling, drug smuggling, cocaine smuggling, methamphetamine smuggling, alien smuggling, immigration crimes, bank robbery, interstate kidnapping, extortion, child pornography, human sex trafficking, homicides and weapons offenses)
Military (including courts-martial, administrative separation, disability claims, pretrial military diversion, civilian criminal record rehabilitation)
Probation Violations
Bail, jail & O.R. (own recognizance) Releases
OUR DEFENSE STRATEGIES INCLUDE:
- THE PRE-FILE DEFENSE
Criminal Defense Attorney Stephen R. Brodsky believes that your criminal defense should begin with an aggressive and timely “Pre-file Defense”. The Pre-file Defense strategy has proven to be remarkably effective, but rarely used by criminal defense lawyers.
Prosecutors have a sworn duty to reject a criminal case if the evidence raises a reasonable doubt about a person’s guilty. The MyCriminalDefense legal team primary mission is to find enough evidence to create a reasonable doubt about your guilt. In truth, we go a lot further than reasonable doubt. We’re on a mission to find evidence which conclusively establishes your innocence. We don’t want any close calls when it comes time to ask the DA to reject your case. We want to present the DA with indisputable evidence that you’re innocent.
The Pre-file defense strategy absolutely depends upon a thorough professional investigation. The licensed professional investigators are former police detectives with special experience in various areas of police work such as homicide, violent crimes, gangs, vice, theft, narcotics and drugs, sex offenses, juvenile crime, DUI’s (drunk driving), traffic crimes and domestic violence offenses. Our investigators use their expertise to obtain sworn statements from crucial witnesses. These vitally important sworn statements form the backbone of the Pre-file defense because the statements are often sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt about our client’s guilt. In fact, we try to collect evidence that proves your innocence!
ERRONEOUS EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATIONS
Our investigators find ways to seriously discredit and destroy the credibility of witnesses for the prosecution. For example, in many pre-file investigations, we find those police officers ask crime victims to identify suspects who are seated alone in police cars or handcuffed on a street curb. This type of identification procedure is called a “curb-side line-up”. It is the most suggestive and erroneous identification procedure that can possibly be used in a police investigation.
A crime victim who has been traumatized, physically or sexually assaulted, robbed or cheated, is almost always going to identify a person who has been handcuffed and displayed as the criminal who committed the crime. The curbside lineup has resulted in many false convictions
To avoid the potentially catastrophic result of a curbside lineup procedure, our investigators put together a photographic identification line-up consisting of six (6) photographs of people from the same racial or ethnic group and having a very similar facial structure and hair distribution. We call this identification procedure the “Six Pack”. Often times, crime victims and prosecution witnesses who have falsely identified our clients at a curbside lineup are shown the six-pack photo line-up at a later time, and they end up identifying a completely different person!
We have won many cases involving an erroneous curbside identification of our clients by using our six-pack identification strategy.
FALSE ACCUSATIONS (actual story)
Our law firm’s investigators interview prosecution witnesses to expose their motives to fabricate false accusations against our clients. For example, in a recent case, my client was arrested for allegedly raping a young woman he met at a party at his house. Before prosecutors filed charges, Criminal defense attorney, Stephen R. Brodsky and his professional investigator, a former San Diego Police Department sergeant with over 30 years of experience, interviewed witnesses who were at our client’s party. One of the witnesses had become sick during the party and retired to our client’s bedroom to lie down on our client’s king-sized bed. When our client and the alleged rape victim went to client’s bedroom, they began to have consensual sex, unaware that the other young man was lying at the other end of the bed. The alleged rape victim screamed and our client was arrested by police who were called to our client’s house.
Our investigator found this important witness who observed our client and the alleged female victim having consensual sex with each other. The investigator took a sworn statement from this witness and Criminal Defense Attorney Stephen R. Brodsky submitted the statement to the deputy district attorney assigned to review this case for the potential filing of rape charges against our client.
The DA sent his own investigator to the witness’s home to conduct a separate interview. The witness gave essentially the same statement to the DA’s own investigator. The DA subsequently rejected the case and rape charges were not filed against our client. Our investigation also revealed the alleged victim’s motive to lie. Her boyfriend was coming in from another state, and the victim realized that other people would tell her boyfriend that she was sexually flirtatious with our client during the entire party. The alleged victim fabricated the rape accusations to try to save her relationship with her boyfriend. Our investigator learned these facts from interviewing a half-dozen other witnesses at the party who knew the alleged victim.
- PRETRIAL DISMISSAL OF CHARGES
Even the most conscientiously prepared Pre-file Defense will sometimes fail because some prosecutors have their own reasons for wanting to file charges in certain types of crimes. For example, we find that Domestic Violence prosecutors have a strong bias against people accused of committing crimes of domestic violence. Often times, these are career DA’s who have aligned themselves with special interest groups who contribute a lot of money to the Domestic Violence Division of the DA’s office. In time, DV prosecutors and the special interest DV organizations form solid alliances with an agenda towards achieving a high conviction rate. Recently, we presented a sworn statement from the wife of a US Navy Officer who initially accused her husband of choking her unconscious, but, subsequently, admitted to our investigators that she lied to the police because she wanted to punish her husband for his infidelities in their marriage.
We submitted this affidavit (statement sworn under penalty of perjury) to the DA assigned to prosecute this case. The DA’s own investigator corroborated the wife’s affidavit in a separate statement. The DA, nevertheless, refused to reject the case. We asked the DA’s supervisor to review the case. The supervisor, a former Navy aviator, ordered the assigned DA to dismiss charges before our client’s trial.
In other cases, our investigators, and, sometimes our experts in the area of eyewitness identification and false accusations, will team up and find evidence that the experts will evaluate and prepare a special report to submit to the DA assigned to prosecute the case. The statement will often expose a false or mistaken identification by gathering evidence that shows the weakness of the method of eyewitness identification and/or the reasons for why a crime victim or witness may not have been capable of making an objectively sound identification.
This evidence is often not obtained until after charges have been filed against our clients. When we present this evidence casting serious doubt on the accuracy of the identification, the DA has often dismissed charges with the realization that the prosecution’s case could not prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, the identification of our client as the perpetrator of the crime.
- NOT GUILTY VERDICT AFTER JURY TRIAL
In some cases, even indisputable evidence of innocence will meet with resistance from DA’s who refuse to dismiss charges. Sometimes, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know why a prosecutor refuses to reconsider the charges in the light of new evidence of innocence. It’s very baffling, but when that happens, and a prosecutor leaves us with no alternative but to take our client’s case to a jury trial, we are more prepared than the prosecutor.
We, therefore, have to take a case to trial when, at times, we have an excellent defense that we’ve carefully constructed by an excellent pretrial investigation, supplemented when necessary, by experts whose opinions are necessary to establish a successful and winning defense for our clients. The advantage that we gain for our clients is that we prepare our client’s trial defense even before the DA files charges.
The Pre-file Defense is a complete defense that is actually ready for trial. We prepare our trial defense before the DA decides to file charges because we want to give our client every advantage of getting the client’s case rejected, and not have to go through the entire trial process. We have our complete trial defense prepared from the very beginning of our client’s case!
In some cases, the evidence can be very close. In theory, a close case which can go either way is, by definition, a case which has reasonable doubt. There is an instruction of law that a judge often gives the jury at the end of a trial. It’s called the jury instruction on “Circumstantial Evidence’. The Circumstantial Evidence jury instruction requires a jury to return a not guilty verdict if there are two interpretations of circumstantial evidence, with one pointing to guilt and the other, to innocence, and both interpretations are reasonable, then, the jury must adopt the interpretation pointing to innocence and reject the interpretation pointing to guilt.
- NOT GUILTY VERDICT AT JURY TRIAL
A great lawyer was once asked why a courthouse had so many courtrooms. The lawyer responded, “courtrooms were designed for trials.” There are times when we must advise our clients to go to trial. We advise our clients that a jury trial would best serve them only if we are confident that we will achieve a not guilty verdict.
Criminal Defense Attorney Stephen R. Brodsky has tried over one hundred criminal cases to a jury verdict or hung jury. The majority of Mr. Brodsky’s trials have ended in a not guilty verdict or a hung jury. His scientific, methodical approach towards developing a successful defense strategy often results in a not guilty verdict for his clients. Mr. Brodsky has defended clients in almost every criminal practice area, from violent crimes carrying potential life sentences to minor shoplifting or drug possession charges. Regardless of the crime charged, Mr. Brodsky’s inventive mind and thorough pretrial defense preparation, has proved to be the crucial factor in achieving a successful trial verdict for his clients.
If you are the subject of a criminal investigation, or if you have been arrested or charged with a crime, don’t leave your defense for the last moment!
Call us today, at , to schedule a free legal consultation. Our law firm will go to work on preparing a successful defense, if possible, with the goal of getting your case rejected. Don’t wait until it’s too late to avoid criminal prosecution. We’ll prepare a unique Pre-file defense that will persuade the DA to reject your case.
Call today.