Welcome back and thanks for joining us again for this discussion on court appointed attorneys in CPS cases. In our previous article we looked at some of the frightening realities that many people don’t realize about having a defense attorney assigned by the court. We also shared some information from an investigative article published in the Lansing State Journal on the realities of court appointed attorneys in mid-Michigan. Information that should scare almost anyone into wanting to hire their own attorney in the future.

The Lansing State Journal interviewed a number of court appointed attorneys, and talked to them about the problems they face. One of the issues they talked about was how few of the court-appointed defense attorneys actually provided their clients with a real defense against the charges. With probable cause and preliminary hearings waived three out of four times, and expert witnesses and private investigators hired in only 2% of cases, it hardly seems as if these clients are getting well defended. The reason? According to the attorneys who spoke with the investigative journalist, they said they rarely ask for fees for expert witnesses because they know they’ll be denied.

One of the people interviewed by the LSJ for this story was Eve Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Primus pointed out that DNA exonerations are widely known throughout the U.S. But what about all of those cases where there is no DNA that could be used to exonerate an innocent person, she asks. Another point she made was that the typical DNA exonerations come in rather high-profile cases where both the prosecution and the defense put in a significant amount of time and effort to “get it right.” So if we’re getting it wrong in the really serious cases, Primus says, we’re probably also getting it wrong in the more minor cases where not nearly as many eyes have been looking at the problem.

Building a strong defense takes a long time and a great deal of resources.

This is painfully true. We can’t begin to tell you how much time and effort and hard work and skill goes into a well crafted defense. In CPS defense cases, where the allegations are usually hearsay and there is little physical evidence beyond possible injuries to a child, it is an extremely complex process to construct a strong defense. We can only imagine how terrible this must be for someone accused of a crime, especially when that accusation is false, to have a defender who is utterly uninterested in their personal defense. Which, given the incredible bias that defendants face in today’s criminal justice system, needs to be considerable.

We don’t want to sound like we’re trash talking the Michigan court appointed attorneys, because we’re not. We understand that they are swamped with clients and are poorly paid. But never the less, we know for a fact that if you’ve been accused of child abuse or neglect and you think you can’t afford to hire an attorney, what you really can’t afford is to NOT hire your own attorney! All this does is serve to support what we’ve always said about the cost of an experienced and aggressive CPS defense attorney. It’s expensive, we understand that. After all – there is a lot of work and experience and expertise that goes into criminal defense. But on the one hand the cost can be counted in dollars, on the other hand the price paid is in years. The years of your future.

So if you or a loved one have been accused of child abuse or neglect by CPS, call the experienced CPS defense team at The Kronzek Firm. We have decades of experience defending people accused of harming or neglecting children, and our team brings a wide variety of skills and knowledge to the table. If you have been accused of a crime by CPS, you are going to need an aggressively constructed criminal defense which is tailored to fit your specific circumstances. Not a five minute meet-and-greet before your next court appearance, where you are encouraged to just plead guilty and get it over with.