Legal advice on Burden of proof for criminal charges

In this final video of a series of three, federal criminal defense attorney Joseph Abrams discusses psychological evaluation reports and character letters as other important aspects of sentencing advocacy in federal criminal cases.

In this second video of a series of three, federal criminal defense attorney Joseph Abrams discusses the defendant's remorse and acceptance of responsibility for the offense as another important aspect of sentencing advocacy in federal criminal cases.

In this first video of a series of three, federal criminal defense attorney Joseph Abrams discusses the credibility of the defense attorney as an important aspect of sentencing advocacy in federal criminal cases.

Stand Your Ground (SYG) is a pretrial motion that seeks a Court Order granting you absolute immunity from criminal prosecution.

When you use SYG you basically say to the Court: “I should not have been arrested because I was lawfully defending myself at the time.” The concept of SYG stems from the common law “castle doctrine”, which held that you have no duty to retreat when you are on your own property and you reasonably believe that you must use force to protect yourself, your property or another.

The main difference between traditional self-defense and SYG is that SYG removes the duty to retreat and extends the lack of a duty to retreat to anywhere within the entire, State provided that you are found to have been acting reasonably under the circumstances.

I know this is a bit confusing so here’s an example: You’re drug dealer on a street corner. A guy comes towards you, reaches into his waist band and draws a firearm. You, believing that you are in imminent danger of being robbed or killed, draw your firearm and shoot the guy. Even though you are a drug dealer, under FL’s SYG law you used that amount of force which was reasonably necessary under the circumstances to defend you own life. You had no duty to retreat and it makes no difference that you were engaged in an unlawful activity at the time.

The idea with SYG is that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you are or what you are doing. What matters is that you acted reasonably under the circumstances and that you have no duty to retreat and no obligation to get yourself killed.

Rule 104. Preliminary questions.

(a) Questions of admissibility generally. - Preliminary questions concerning the qualification of a person to be a witness, the existence of a privilege, or the admissibility of evidence shall be determined by the court, subject to the provisions of subdivision (b). In making its determination it is not bound by the rules of evidence except those with respect to privileges.

(b) Relevancy conditioned on fact. - When the relevancy of evidence depends upon the fulfillment of a condition of fact, the court shall admit it upon, or subject to, the introduction of evidence sufficient to support a finding of the fulfillment of the condition.

(c) Hearing of jury. - Hearings on the admissibility of confessions or other motions to suppress evidence in criminal trials in Superior Court shall in all cases be conducted out of the hearing of the jury. Hearings on other preliminary matters shall be so conducted when the interests of justice require or, when an accused is a witness, if he so requests.

(d) Testimony by accused. - The accused does not, by testifying upon a preliminary matter, subject himself to cross-examination as to other issues in the case.

(e) Weight and credibility. - This rule does not limit the right of a party to introduce before the jury evidence relevant to weight or credibility