Armed robbery is going to be robbery where there is a weapon involved. This charge can affect your reputation and have long term impacts. These cases can be complicated and if you handle your own case, you could jeopardize the outcome. It is important to work with a dedicated robbery lawyer, who can assist you during this process. There are multiple elements involved in armed robbery. Contact a knowledgeable robbery lawyer as soon as possible.
Spotsylvania takes robbery offenses seriously. The prosecutors and law enforcement in Spotsylvania want to protect the community. When they do happen, the community is worried for its safety. The law enforcement officers and the prosecutors want to go ahead and prevent that situation from happening again in order to ensure that citizens are safe. As such, they want to punish and make an example of anybody who is caught, tried, and convicted of any armed robbery charge.
There is not a separate offense of armed robbery. There is just robbery when there are these extra elements to it, such as having a weapon. When there is some type of weapon involved, that would be the difference between just maybe a threat, force, or intimidation without a weapon.
When somebody is looking for an attorney to represent them—whether the person is charged with robbery and a weapon involved—they definitely want an attorney because, with robbery charges in Virginia, they are felony offenses: five years mandatory minimum, the person could face up to life in prison.
A person needs somebody who has experience so they can mount a robust defense. Otherwise, the person could be facing an incredibly large amount of time incarcerated and they might completely lose their freedom. This is not something a person wants to mess around with so they absolutely need to hire somebody who has experience, not only in the area so they know judges, prosecutors, and what a jury would potentially do with the crime based on their experience with similar crimes but also in situations where they will need to go ahead and negotiate with the judges and the prosecutors and get information from the prosecutors.
Having somebody who is local, who knows the way the system works, and can get this information sooner rather than later is going to be a huge bonus in the case. A person cannot afford to waste that opportunity.
Virginia armed robbery lawyers might leverage their experience over the prosecutor by pointing out flaws in the person’s case, pointing out what a particular judge has done with that type of situation before, and pointing out what a jury is likely to do with that particular case.
What they can do is then convince the prosecutor to go ahead and offer some better deal than what the original charges are based on the likelihood that something less than favorable will happen to the prosecution’s case based on the attorney’s experience. An attorney can obviously use that information to leverage.
A person should contact a criminal lawyer as soon as they possibly can. If they think they are about to be investigated or they think they are going to be arrested for any armed robbery or robbery charge in Spotsylvania, they should contact a lawyer right away.
A lawyer can help them either turn themselves in if there is a warrant out for them or otherwise protect them from giving away statements that might ultimately lead to their conviction and they might not even know it. For example, police officers might come and just talk to somebody about where they were and what happened, and all that information is just being gathered to use against them for the ultimate armed robbery or robbery charge.
As soon as a person thinks that they might have reason to be charged if the person commits a crime, if the person does not commit a crime but they were in a bad place at a bad time, if a person saw a crime being committed and is not sure whether or not they could be charged as an accomplice, they need to call a criminal defense attorney so that that person can get on the case and start doing damage control to make sure that their client stays out of prison and ultimately does not make the case worse against them.