By Mansfield Frazier
Once we get over our collective case of schadenfreude vis-a-via Jimmy Dimora — due to his failure to self-check his avarice, sloth and outsized appetites — getting sunk like the Titanic he had become, we can perhaps learn some legal lessons that will assist us in assuring fair treatment is the rule of the day in criminal matters here in Cuyahoga County in the future.
With Tim McGinty winning the race for prosecutor (although attorney Ed Wade has turned in enough signatures to go on the ballot in the fall as an Independent, winning remains a long shot in this heavily Democratic county) the local defense bar is perhaps going to have to do some things differently moving forward.
While in some circles much has been made of the fact Dimora eschewed a plea deal and elected to fight the feds to the bitter end, the plain fact was no reasonable plea deal probably was ever offered to him. If you’re being offered 20-plus years as some sort of bargain, you might as well roll the dice since you probably won’t get much more time if you lose taking it to trial. Additionally, with the plea deal there’s no chance of reversal on appeal (you can’t appeal a guilty verdict) — while such a possibility… admittedly a very remote one… does exist when found guilty at trial.
When (and if) McGinty takes office, if local criminal defense lawyers are willing to strap their nuts on (something they’ve been loath to do for decades, not only here, but around the country) they can force him to come with fairer plea offers simply by, en masse, refusing to accept bad deals and threatening to take more cases to trial… many, many more cases.
The plain fact is that 95 percent of the criminal indictments in Cuyahoga County are pleaded out; a “deal” no matter how lopsided for the prosecutor’s office — is struck. Nonetheless, unlike the feds, the county criminal justice system struggles to hold trials for the five percent of cases that do go to trial. Just imagine what would happen if say even 10, or perhaps 20 percent or more, of felony cases went to trail? The system would go into severe overload and would effectively grind to a halt… unless taxpayers were willing to pony up millions (maybe even hundreds of millions) of additional dollars to build more courtrooms and staff them.
Faced with this option, a new prosecutor would have to quit over-indicting and sending people to prison over petty (often drug) cases and find more treatment options for the masses of non-violent defendants… thus freeing up prison beds for the truly dangerous predator offenders who need to be behind bars.
In the short term, and especially if only one or two lawyers dug their heels in and told their clients to refuse the deal, some defendants would probably face harsher sentences. That’s how the plea bargain operates: Accept the deal and get say, three years, or go to trial and get say, 10. In other words, persons are punished for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a trial by jury. But if enough lawyers stood up together and became what the canons of their profession calls for — being zealous advocates for the clients — even the potentially harshest prosecutor can be brought to heel and be forced to treat defendants and their lawyers fairly.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Moving Forward”
Po Mcn
Hey Manny, how long is your old lady gonna serve, heard she was another Dem/Dimora