Upper Moreland Township Criminal Defense Lawyer

Pennsylvanians live in a false security that they can’t go to jail unless they are intentionally committing a crime. The reality is that a crime isn’t what it used to be. Only five percent of all cases ever make it to the trial level because the sentencing schemes are stacked to compel guilty pleas.

If you are charged with a crime in Upper Moreland Township, you have no choice other than to hire a skilled criminal defense attorney. If you rely on court-appointed attorneys or try to argue the case yourself, you are risking serious consequences. This is because the laws in Pennsylvania are so complex that it is difficult to compel support against an injustice that is too hard to even comprehend.

Pennsylvania judges do this on purpose by intentionally writing the judicial decisions with so many different elements to consider that the law becomes convoluted. Most Americans don’t have the attention span to follow the logic used by the courts to deny someone evidence or to throw out an invalid case. This complexity hides a great evil and makes it easy for Pennsylvania to fill up its 24 state prisons and to house roughly 100,000 prisoners at a time.

Don’t believe that everything is like you see on TV. In Pennsylvania, there is a strong incentive to fill bed space in prisons and less incentive to see justice carried out. Only when you work with a skilled attorney who cares about your rights and doing what is fair can you get any leverage.

By hiring a private Upper Moreland Township attorney, you are already making it hard for the system to treat you unfairly and separating yourself from the unrepresented classes that are in and out of jail. Don’t let the “win at all costs” policy of Pennsylvania prosecutors steal your life away.

DUI Charges and Traffic Violations

You may think that you are safe to drive in Pennsylvania if you are driving a few blocks away or simply don’t feel impaired. However, the legal limits for blood alcohol concentration (BAC) are very low. If you have a BAC exceeding 0.08 percent, you can be convicted of DUI and sent to prison for five years. You can also have your license suspended and be forced to attend an alcohol rehab even if you are a social drinker.

The DUI charges are often accompanied by other traffic violations, such as reckless driving, to slander the character of the defendant. Sadly, these allegations are often based on the unsupported testimony of the arresting officers. In other cases, the breathalyzer machines may not be calibrated properly. If you are going to drink in Pennsylvania, you may want to keep your own breathalyzer handy and record the results to negate any intent to drive drunk on your behalf.

Even the traffic citations alone can amount to prison sentences in Pennsylvania if you fail to pay them. You can have your driver’s license suspended and may be hauled in on a bench warrant. Failure to attend hearings can also lead to imprisonment.

Misdemeanor and Felony Charges in Upper Moreland Township

The hard realities of being charged with a misdemeanor or felony in Pennsylvania is absurd. Most of the time, the prosecutors hit defendants with numerous violations for one single criminal episode. These violations may be 90 percent identical to each other and still count as an additional crime.

You would think that this would violate your double jeopardy rights against being tried twice for the same crime; however, a sophism that they are completely different if one element is different somehow legalizes it using judicial fiat.

Following this type of slippery logic, it is easy to see how the Pennsylvania courts can paint anything as a crime. If you don’t have the best Upper Moreland Township criminal defense attorneys in your corner, the officials will walk all over you.