If you are arrested and charged with a crime, your lawyer isn’t going to be able to build a very strong defense if they just take your word-of-mouth version of events as the absolute truth. Even if your version is truthful, they’ll need to review some documents to help better understand how the prosecution intends to build their case. If you bring some of these documents to your lawyer, it will make your case run that much more smoothly. Below, we take a look at some of the documents your lawyer will likely review when building your defense case.
Documents Your Lawyer Will Review
If you have access to any of these documents, feel free to bring them along to your free consultation with a lawyer. We don’t expect you to come with a bevy of documents, and there are some things on this list that you likely won’t have access to, so we’ll handle tracking them down on our own. Here’s a look at some of the documents we’ll review.
The Police Report – The initial police report will give the lawyer a good idea what happened from the police officer’s prospective. There may be points of the report that the client feels are untrue or misleading, and we can attack those aspects in court, but the initial police report gives the basics of what transpired from the officer’s perspective, which is very helpful for the defense.
Investigatory Reports – In more complex cases, investigation reports from multiple officers or agencies may be made, and these will also be extremely helpful for your lawyer to review. Reports from the medical examination, accident reconstruction experts or forensics testing may all be reviewed by your lawyer depending on the specifics of your case.
Criminal Complaint – The lawyer will also review the criminal complaint, which lays out which charges are being levied against the client and a short narrative as to why the charges are justified. This will provide statute numbers and sentencing guidelines, which can help with plea negotiations and general case defense.
Criminal Record/Driving Record – Your lawyer will review your criminal record and your driving record if they are pertinent to your case, especially if charges have been upgraded based on your past. On the flip side, if your record is clean, this can help speak to your character!
Witness Lists – One thing that you may be able to bring to the lawyer’s office is a list of witnesses who can verify your version of events. Anyone who witnessed the incident will be worth speaking to, so if you can get a list of names and contact phone numbers or email addresses, it will be a huge help!
As you can see, there are a number of documents that will need to be analyzed and interpreted in order to build your defense, so leave it up to the experts to handle everything by bringing a lawyer on board. To take a free case evaluation and learn more about your options, reach out to Avery and the team at Appelman Law Firm today at (952) 224-2277
