Maryland Criminal Attorney Blog

As an Aggressive and Experienced Maryland Criminal Defense Attorney, I have represented dozens of people who have been charged with Sexual Solicitation of a Minor. In most of these cases, the defendant is caught in a sting operation conducted by state of federal law enforcement.

I represented a client in one such case this week in Baltimore County Circuit Court. The State was seeking a sentence of 10 years in the Division of Corrections with all but 5 years to be suspended. I was able to get him a sentence of just 4 weekends to be served in the Baltimore County Detention Center. This, in spite of the fact that we ended up in front of a judge who is widely regarded as a very tough sentencing judge and the fact that we literally had no defense. How did this happen? The answer is we put together a compelling presentation of mitigating facts and circumstances to argue for a sentence much less than the State was demanding.

It may surprise some to know, that in many criminal cases there really is no plausible defense to the charges. In street parlance these cases are known as "dead up" or "slam dunk" cases. The fact of the matter is that in many if not most cases, the police do their job correctly and gather enough evidence to make conviction a virtual certainty. In these matters, it is vital that the criminal defense attorney have the requisite experience and judgment to first recognize the fact that the case is indefensible and then the integrity to break the bad news to the client. In these cases it is always in the client's interest to accept that conviction is inevitable and concentrate on doing what is necessary to limit the damage. In other words, work on mitigation. All too often, I see inexperienced or ineffective attorneys pursuing unrealistic defenses in court that result in their clients to be punished more harshly by the courts either because the client didn't get the benefit of accepting responsibility for his or her actions, because the court believes that the client lied on the stand, or simply because the judge imposes a trial penalty. Another way to say that is that the court doesn't give the defendant the benefit he would have received in a plea bargain. Here are the facts of the case I had this week.

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STSW attorneys Andrew White and Erin Murphy gained a high stakes victory in the Baltimore City Circuit Court in a case in which an STSW client was charged with multiple felony counts involving the possession of a handgun. The client had been charged after a car in which he was riding crashed on a northern Baltimore City roadway. According to witnesses at the scene, a handgun was thrown from the vehicle after the car flipped over multiple times and came to rest on its side. The witnesses described how the driver of the vehicle threw the gun from the car, which witnesses told police was being operated at a high rate of speed prior to the crash. The driver testified as a prosecution witness and testified that the STSW client gave her the firearm after the crash occurred. She also testified that the client possessed the firearm because he wanted to confront persons who had reportedly hurt his son. At trial, Mr. White and Ms. Murphy discredited the cooperating witnesses and used the physical evidence from the crash scene to show that the prosecution’s version of events was not possible. In issuing the “not guilty” verdict, the Circuit Court Judge agreed that the prosecution’s version of the case was undermined by the evidence adduced by Mr. White and Ms. Murphy at trial as well as by the extensive cross-examination of the cooperating witness.