A day at the public defender's office

This week I sent a man to prison.
This man was my own client.
My client was a young man who stole some things from the place that he worked. Unfortunately for him this place was a well know store. The store has excellent quality video surveillance footage of the client and another man stealing almost $900 worth of items. This means that it is a felony. The fact that it was a felony and the fact that there was such excellent footage of him stealing the items meant that it was in the client’s best interest to negotiate a plea deal because if he went to trial the DA would ask for a much stiffer sentence and the judge would likely agree.
I understand that a defendant should not be punished because he exercised his right to a jury trial. But unfortunately this is not usually the case. The DA’s office will offer pleas to most (if not all) defendants to save the court the time and expense of holding a trial of someone who admits that they did the crime. The DA’s office will offer a lowered sentence for the person in exchange for admitting the wrongdoing and saving the taxpayers the time and expense of trial. If the defendant does not accept the plea, the lowered punishment is off the table and the DA’s office will ask for a much higher punishment. In essence, this punishes the defendant for seeking a jury trial if he is found guilty. But this is the norm across the country and I can certainly see the argument for this being the preferred way to handle plea deals.
The DA offered to give my client 6 years with 2 years to serve. I negotiated back and forth for most of the day between my client and the DA’s office. Eventually we reached an agreement for 5 years with 1 year to serve, restitution of the value of the stolen items, and my client has to stay out of the store. Banishment from this particular store is not a punishment that most judges in a small town take lightly. The judge asked the prosecutor where she expected the defendant to shop and she replied “Target”. The judge turned to the defendant and said “I certainly hope for your sake that we have a Target in this town by the time you get out of jail.”
At 4:25 in the afternoon I stood with the client as he plead guilty and the judge sentenced him to “5 to do 1”. Then I watched the client walk away with the sheriff on his way to prison.