PASSIONATE AND PROFESSIONAL LOS ANGELES CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY AND DUI LAWYER
The practice of law has long been considered a profession, rather than an occupation or career.  Clients trust their attorneys with very important issues, ranging from financial affairs, wills, child custody, and of course, their liberty.  Attorneys are held to high standards, both for performance and professional conduct.  Being trustworthy, diligent and 100% committed are all musts.

For criminal defense lawyers, there are many unique professional responsibilities, and the consequences can be significant in criminal cases.  I am often asked how I can represent someone I know is guilty, or even suspect is guilty, and I barely even entertain the question.  Why wouldn't or why couldn't I fully and zealously represent my clients' interests regardless of guilt?  The US Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant's right to counsel, and representation should be zealous.

Sure, with strong evidence against my client, it becomes more difficult to get a good outcome.  However, video footage, confessions, eyewitness testimony are all potentially flawed.  Even seemingly strong evidence could be faulty, and could be used in court to convict an innocent person.  If my client wishes to fight the charges against them, my client still gets my full commitment.  This is what a criminal defense attorney does.  Not only have I been hired to represent the client's best interests, but I am usually strongly against the types and severity of punishment the government is seeking.  

I feel good about keeping even a guilty person out of custody, and/or from being deported, losing their license or losing their job.  No moral qualms at all.  Giving a client a second chance (or even a third, fourth, fifth or sixth chance) is my pleasure, and never anything that would bother me.  

Additionally, sometimes someone who seems guilty is not.  An estimated 10,000 innocent people are convicted each year in this country, and the advent of DNA evidence has helped the Innocence Project free many wrongfully convicted people.  In many of those cases, the evidence seemed strong, maybe even strong enough to convince the defense attorney, but there should never have been a conviction in those cases.

Protecting the guilty also protects the innocent another way.  If a guilty person is acquitted at trial or at a preliminary hearing because there is not enough evidence presented of the defendant's guilt, that is good news for innocent people facing criminal charges.  If our system gets too conviction-happy (and it is!), innocent people will be convicted, even in the face of problems with the evidence.  This highlights the importance of the high burden on the government in criminal cases: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  There is a lot of confusion on just what proof beyond a reasonable doubt means, but know that it is a very high standard, the highest one our courts employ.  When money is at stake in a civil case, the winning party just needs to show more evidence that they deserve money than the defendant can put up to the contrary.  In criminal cases, jurors must not have lingering doubts as to whether a defendant is guilty.

Criminal defense attorneys also protect the Constitutional rights of innocent people by defending guilty clients in other ways.  If, for example, the police obtain evidence of illegal activity in violation of a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights, a motion to suppress the evidence will let the defendant walk away.  But doing so keeps the police honest.  The reason we are not stopped and searched more often without justification is that if the police do find something, a criminal defense attorney will get that evidence thrown out in court.

With experience working for multiple public defender agencies, as well as achieving great results for clients in criminal cases, Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney Nicholas Loncar is deeply committed to criminal defense and works hard for every client.  There are no guarantees about the outcome of a criminal case, but our firm's promise is to fight hard for you, and leave no stone unturned in trying to get you the best possible outcome.  If you have been arrested or charged with a crime in Los Angeles or Southern California and have court at the LA Superior Court or other court, contact the Law Offices of Nicholas Loncar for a free consultation with an LA criminal defense lawyer.

Nicholas M. Loncar, Esq. 
Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney
t: 213-375-3775 | f: 213-375-3099
Mobile: 323-803-4352 
NL@iDefendLosAngeles.com
1200 Wilshire Blvd | Suite 406
Los Angeles, CA | 90017
www.iDefendLosAngeles.com