I Only Have Bad News for You

I can only give you bad news about your situation if you are looking at your child having been arrested and charged in King County. There is no magic fairy dust that's going to get you out of the situation. But you need to know the realities of your situation:

• King County charges 2/3 of all juveniles as adults. And they aren't going to back down and suddenly nicely put you back in juvenile court. It goes against their "tough on crime" stance.
  
  Despite what Satterberg says, he is a conservative. He only has one example of 7 people he let try out a more progressive approach in 2017. And after seeing him in a debate with Daron Morris in 2018, he is nothing more than a politician who avoids giving any real answers.
  
  
• You are in for a long wait, especially if your child has been charged with high level felony charges. My son waited over a year and a half for a trial date to actually be set. The higher the charge the longer they will wait. I still look at the court docket every day. People with high level charges can wait as long as 2 years for trial.
  
  Pay upfront for a package of phone calls on the Securus website. I kept putting it off because I kept thinking this would be over soon, but I didn't know exactly when. I didn't want waste money. Instead I wasted it on collect call charges.
  
  
• You won't make it to trial. Everything is stacked against you and your child. If you make it to the point that a trial date is set, that date will slide and slide and slide every week for as long as 6 months. A set trial date means nothing. It's just another thing they use against you and your child to force your child into a plea deal.
  
  

• Your plea deal will absolutely suck. We were given one plea deal and it never really changed even a year later -- we won't give you the 2 years add-on for using a deadly weapon. Otherwise we want you to serve the full adult sentence.
  
  
• Your child will probably go to prison, even if they go to trial. Of all people charged in this country only .3% (yes point-three percent) are found innocent. Studies show that if you go to trial you are likely to receive a more severe sentence than in you take the plea deal. (It sucks either way.)
  
  
• No one will tell you this: if your child is charged and sentenced to one of WA states highest 8 crimes, they will receive 2 strikes, not 1. We only found out when my son received a guide for prison while he was in county jail.
  
  
• Getting out of county lock up is one of the better things you can do, kind of. It really depends on the prison. But the pressure being put on your child by the environment created by jail is far worse than accepting what's going to happen and getting it over with. But prison is f-ing scary, too, especially as a parent and county lock up means you have at least some access to visit them. Mine is now a 6-hour drive over the mountains.
  
  

While I know all of this is depressing, there is some good news. There are lots of groups out there trying to make things change for juveniles. If your child is sentenced as an adult, as of January 2020 they will be put into a juvenile facility. Prior to that unfortunately they are putting them into adult prison and will have to go through some kind of review before being moved. But that review is to be finished at the end of January 2020 and kids will be moved in February.

However, now having been through this system and I know this is conspiracy theory-ish, I believe kids are presently being put into harsher prisons where they might be more apt to be pressured into committing a crime such as assault. The way I read the law, if they are charged as an adult at an adult age, the juvenile facility will no longer be an option. I suspect this is being done so the State doesn't have to figure out where to put all the people in prison who committed a crime under the age of 18. Easier to cross them off a list than have to actually conduct a review and find a place for them in a juvenile facility. I came up with it by myself. The other persons around my son came up with it, too.

Should I Hire a Lawyer or Use the Public Defender?

My son's case has "finished" at least through the court system. When I was first in this predicament I had no clue what to do. I am originally from Texas where a public defender is just an attorney picked at random from a pool of attorneys in the area. And, I worked for an attorney there who was given a case as a public defender. The last thing he wanted to do was actually defend the guy. In the Seattle/King County area we have public defenders that are paid for by the county. This is because Washington State has a law that makes 13 year-olds adults in the eyes of the law for certain professions, lawyers being one of them.

Please note, what I am about to say is NOT LEGAL ADVICE. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what your situation is. I can only tell you what has happened to us and how I personally would have done it differently for our situation. You have to decide for your own situation and finances. Because  many lawyers will give you a free consultation, consulting a lawyer for your situation is the only advice I can give you.

When I went searching for what to do, the only sage advice I came by was that where an area has public defender offices, it is better to go with the public defender -- as long as they appear to be doing the job -- because they have a better relationship with the prosecutor's office. The problem is "as long as they appear to be doing their job." The only way you can possibly know is if they are actually discussing the case with you. In order for that to happen your child must sign paperwork both when they are underage and when they turn 18 for the public defender to discuss the case with you. In our situation, my son told his attorney multiple times, including once in front of me, that she had permission to discuss his case with me. She never had him sign the paper work and I only received 6 phone calls from her within a 20-month time period.

The problem with a dedicated public defenders office is that just like the prosecutor's office they have a limited budget. That means they want and need as many people to take plea deals as much as the prosecutor's office does. And they WILL, and did with us, manipulate and coerce you (pressuring me to pressure my son) to take a plea deal.

They will also consult with your child, including giving and explaining the plea deal (if they actually explain it) without you being present. I've seen multiple 13 year-olds being given their plea deal with a subtle lack of help, but expectation that the child sign it without another adult being present.

When we first started this hell-filled journey, we were told by his attorney he would probably get 2-3 years. We were pressured to take a plea deal where the prosecutor would still recommend the regular sentence, but allow the public defender to recommend a lower sentence. That was the "best" plea deal we were ever offered or as I said, "How the hell is this any different than going to trial, just without the trial?" We were told that his attorney would recommend 4 years, which neither of us were happy with, but we finally went with it due to their pressure. Two days before trial instead of submitting the promised brief to the court, his attorney submitted a "recommendation" filing stating she was recommending 5 years instead of the 4. When you go into sentencing, the judge basically rubber stamps this. (So you public defender is determining how long you will serve. I'm still trying to figure out how this is even legal.)

If I were able to do this over, I would have let the public defender deal with the initial months of arraignment and continuances while I found a good attorney who had experience in juvenile law. This is actually harder than it seems as there does't appear to be a lot of attorneys who practice juvenile law. Even when I did call attorneys none of them returned my calls.

The other thing to consider is that, according to studies that I've read, the average amount people pay an attorney outside of a public defender is a year's salary, most likely dependent on the seriousness of the charge. I've also read that in some places you will be expected to pay a fee to the court that helps pay for the public defender. You should definitely find out if that is true for you. If you're going to pay for an attorney one way or the other, make sure they're working for you.

Finally, a public defender's role is not to create a robust defense, which may seem backwards. Because you are supposedly innocent before being found guilty, they are really only there to make sure that the defendant's rights are not abused or trampled on.