Cingolani & Cingolani

What happens with the defendant and the case after an acquittal? After acquittal, the jury is dismissed. Sometimes they are hurried out. I try to thank them the moment after the verdict is announced. Sometimes the judge and prosecutor hold them in the jury assembly room and ask them why the prosecution failed. Sometimes the jurors hang around outside the courthouse to tell me why they acquitted my client. It is always a moment of high tension and many jurors want a chance to ...Continue reading

Should Defendants elect to choose a Bench Trial before a judge instead of a jury? While Judges and prosecutors invite Defendants to choose a bench trial over a jury trial, a Defendant should never accept this temptation, no matter how graciously offered. It is a velvet fist and the fist underneath is in an armored glove. You will be convicted. Every time. In the trade, we call this a slow plea because the result is always that you will be convicted. Maybe the sentence will be... lighter than offered but it is always an irrevocable conviction permanently blackening your record. If you are going to trial, take a jury trial. As flawed as any group of humans are, if there is a chance, and your lawyer can express some emotional humanity and not just paint by numbers, you stand a chance of winning. Even in hopeless cases, sometimes the lawyer can save something. One time I lost a robbery trial, but when I was done, the jury acquitted them of the robbery with a gun charge because I somehow convinced the jury and the victim that there was no gun pointed at the victim. I still don’t know how I did that. This reduced his sentence by 7 or so years. Another time I went to trial where the girlfriend was charged with burglary and theft of her boyfriend’s house while he was in jail and his parents caught her in the house. While he gave her permission to be there, they hated her and thought she was a bad influence, The jury acquitted her as they loved her.The prosecutor wanted her tried because mother worked at the jail. The judge, and he is a very good and decent man and judge, asked why we went to trial after the case was over and said he would have given her a summary trespass or disorderly. He thought he was being fair. Innocence is irrelevant to judges, Pick a jury every time. See more

Do Lawyers Experience Guilt for Rescuing Someone Guilty? (A question I answered on Quora) Most of the time a Guilty person is going to be convicted because the evidence is really beyond doubt. For example, if a defendant is driving drunk, conviction only requires he or she be, on a public roadway, in possession of a moving vehicle while impaired (with additional refinements of degree of impairment or kind of impairment). If one of those conditions is not met, conviction is...Continue reading

THE MAN WHO LOVED ANIMALS TOO MUCH. There is a book by Carreen Maloney,, UNIQUELY DANGEROUS (2018), about the life and times of Doug Spink, a brilliant young man who became an MBA and financial internet wizard. He had worked in Finance and had become an multimillionaire entrepreneur selling a line of Timber and Hiking clothes on-line. Somehow he got involved in trafficking drugs for what appeared to be easy money. They would be delivered by plane or helicopter into a na...Continue reading

Messy Drug Houses: Over the last several years, as court appointed defense counsel, I believe I have been involved in every major drug raid conducted in Butler County and one or two in other counties. I always go to the scene of every arrest. I can not always enter the properties, but sometimes I have been able to enter the homes and apartments that have been raided, though mostly I have been given color photographic scenes of every room from the front door to the living...Continue reading