If ex BART police officer Johannes Mehserle had read "11 Fatal Mistakes People Make When a Friend or Loved One is Arrested by the Police," the chances are that he would not be sitting in the Alameda County jail facing a charge of first degree murder and a sentence of at least 25 years to Life. Mr. Mehserle is charged with First Degree Murder in People v. Mehserle in Alameda County, California. (case #547353)
San Francisco, California (PRWEB) February 9, 2009 -- In the article "11 Fatal Mistakes People Make When a Loved One Or Friend Is Arrested" clear steps are detailed about what not to do when you or a friend or relative is arrested or about to be arrested by the police. Mr. Mehserle made Mistakes #6 and #10 and is paying the price. Mr. Mehserle hired a workers compensation attorney instead of an experienced criminal lawyer who is a Certified Specialist in Criminal Law.
Mr. Mehserle's worker's compensation attorney had a window of 3 weeks to convince the Alameda County Prosecutors to not charge him with murder and he did nothing on his client's behalf. An experienced criminal attorney would have known exactly what to do.
First of all, the experienced criminal attorney would have sent private investigators to the BART station to hand out leaflets and post signs asking for witnesses to contact the defense team. This needed to be done immediately since the BART police officers at the scene of the killing made very little effort to interview witnesses. Possibly some favorable defense witnesses would have come forward.
Secondly, an experienced criminal attorney would have allowed Mr. Merserle to be interviewed by the District Attorney's Office. Prosecutor's generally have high regard for police officers and would have given him every benefit of the doubt during the interview. The criminal law specialist would have thoroughly prepared his client for the interview, so that Mr. Merserle's answers would have been clear and concise. Mr. Merserle would also have been prepared to demonstrate how he accidently pulled out and fired his service revolver instead of his taser gun. This is important because the experienced criminal attorney would know that this interview would be audio and video taped and others would view the video later.
Thirdly, an experienced criminal lawyer would have offered to have Mr. Merserle submit to a lie detector test. The prosecutors probably would have turned this offer down, but just the offer alone would have given Mr. Merserle a huge amount of credibility.
As it turned out, since Mr. Merserle did not submit to an interview, did not offer to take a lie detector test and the worker's compensation attorney did not locate any favorable witnesses for the defense, the prosecutor's were left with no option but to charge Mr. Merserle with first degree murder.
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[Via Legal / Law]
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