James William Webster

Proof that $7000 can buy poor advice, Mr. Webster was paid to go to trial but maneuvered masterfully out of it while asserting a felony offer when a misdemeanor offer had previously been on the table. If you are confused or naive about what to expect realistically as your best course of action you c...ould do considerably better with the Public defender. Perhaps incapable of dispelling fantasy and also secretly guilty of applying his own bias in the outcome, I will pay for the rest of my life while still believing in some way that I am truly innocent. Follow-up: I'm still a felon today. But.. after 8 more years, there is finally some healing in my family. After getting my felony I lost all my friends, was homeless for a couple years, haunted by misfortune, and had lost all the trust in my family. Mr. Webster, who claims he hadn't had a client with my name since 2016 wasn't lying, he was mitigating responsibility. He represented me in 2009 I believe. Nothing could have been more apparent that he knew who I was than when I received a letter announcing his retirement shortly after writing this review in 2017. He knows who I am. He even got another client to sign in here and vouch for him, not very professional. My review was fair then, and it's still fair now. The Public Defender is more knowledgeable and would have steered me away from a felony at all costs. Which Mr Webster didn't do. I was concerned about spending time in jail back then and should have been concerned about the severity of the charge. I'm wiser now but cannot change the past. Mr Webster did offer me something valuable though which I wanted to add, he told me about the 'Mens Rea' in law, where a person has to be conscious of their crime to have committed it, which I was not conscious. He even told me that we couldn't win the case that I had from day 1, which was completely true. But at that point he resigned himself to let my desperation to escape fill his wallet, instead of believing me enough to throw me a life raft called called 'misdemeanor'. We could have gotten a misdemeanor, it was offered by the prosecution on day 1. But after 25 years of being a prosecutor himself, Mr Webster, who was spending his years unwinding as a defender had a more important problem than getting his clients the best deal. He had to sleep at night for putting every person in jail that was standing on the gray line and that meant letting me hang myself with my own ignorance. That was the cost of playing both sides. And what did Mr Webster do the first moment an accusation was lobbed at him? He mitigated responsibility and tried to cover his butt because he truly believes that everyone is capable of the crimes he spent all those years prosecuting and defending. At least that's equal opportunity. But it certainly isn't the quality of a good defense attorney. I double down on my original review!