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Originally Posted by TAFKAS
A friend of mine once faced a similar predicament. Accept a plea and get like 6 months in jail plus one year probation or something like that. There were so many mistakes by the prosecution that he was convinced by his lawyer not to accept the plea that he would be fine.
He was wrong. He's serving 8 years now with 7 years probation. Of course, the difference is you can dispute a lot of the things that my friend did. Sean Taylor-I know nothing about what really happened.
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Probably the biggest difference between your friend and Sean Taylor is Taylor's a famous athlete and has numerous fans that support him. I read in someone's post that they think the courts may be harsher with an athlete because of his celebrity status, but I tend to think that really isn't the case unless they have no doubt that the athlete is guilty and he has hurt someone in a really bad way - even then, there are cases where the athletes get off scott-free.
In the case of athletes and celebrities, I think there is a lot of hesitancy to screw-up on the part of the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury because it is high-profile and everyone is paying attention. The prosecutor probably took this case and is aggressive in getting a conviction because it is high-profile, but what he doesn't stop to think about is - if he doesn't handle this case correctly and more carefully then it has the potential to turn into unexpected and unwanted attention in the form of fan backlash and general public protest instead of the political publicity that he was seeking.
In the case of your friend's possible unfair outcome, they may have made mistakes - but no one was paying attention and to be frank, I don't think anyone really cares outside of his immediate family.