In Maryland, federal sex crime prosecutors are typically very aggressive in seeking long sentences and often go to great lengths to try and get a conviction. There are even units that are specifically set up to help prosecutors deal with federal sex crimes. These units may have a large number of investigators and resources at their disposal, which makes it important that the person being accused also has an experienced legal representative on their side, in the form of a Maryland federal sex crimes lawyer.
Tactics Used By Prosecutors
Federal sex crime prosecutors often use tactics that rely on the nature of the case to influence the jury. For example, the communication between a person being charged and an undercover agent can be really graphic, which can present a problem. The jury might be prejudiced against the client just by listening to the nature of the chat. When this occurs, a defense attorney will need to be able to defend against that prejudice, which may be done in a number of ways such as communicating to the jury that someone may be on the internet for fantasy, and that they way they act and talk online is different from what they do in reality.
Another common tactic used by prosecutors, especially in child pornography cases, is to show images to the jury that are often terrible and graphic. This can not only end up prejudicing the jury due to the nature of the images, but can also could the real issues in certain cases. In these instances, an attorney will need to employ a strong defense such as demonstrating that their client was not the only one who had access to a particular computer
Evidence
Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure states the government’s responsibilities for disclosing information to the defense. That governs the discovery that the defense attorney is entitled to see.
In a federal sex crime case, the defense attorney gets all of the records of the electronic chat. If there are any pictures deemed to be child pornography involved, the attorney can go and view those at a law enforcement agency. They are not legal to be possessed outside of a law enforcement agency. When the government is going to use an expert, the defense attorney gets an expert notice, which should give a summary of what the expert is going to say.
A criminal defense attorney will work to build a defense against the evidence presented by Maryland federal sex crime prosecutors.
State vs. Federal Offenses
A federal sex crime prosecution in Maryland can be different from a sex crime case within the Maryland district court. In Maryland state court, there are fewer long mandatory minimum sentences that can potentially be imposed. For example, in a federal enticement case, a conviction carries a 10-year mandatory minimum. That does not exist in the Maryland system. The stakes are much higher in federal court in Maryland than in state courts in these types of cases.
