Interviewer: What percentages of your cases go to trial versus being resolved through plea bargains?
Attorney Sloan Advises His Clients on the Benefits of Going to Trial versus Accepting a Plea Bargain
Brian Sloan: Probably only about 5% or so. It’s only up to the client whether they want to go to trial. I give my clients my honest opinion. If I think the case should go to trial, I tell them. If I don’t think it’d be worth it to go to trial; if I don’t think that it would be worth it to pay me to go to trial; or, generally, I think that they’re likely to lose a trial, I tell it like that.
About 5% go to trial. Probably about 95% of those that go to trial, generally speaking, amongst the entire legal community, about 95% of those people are convicted of at least something.
Attorney Sloan Uses Experience and Knowledge to Base His Recommendations about How His Clients’ Cases Will Be Resolved
Interviewer: How often are you right about what’s going to happen in a case? How often are you surprised no matter what happens in case?
Brian Sloan: You come at the cases legally and factually from a certain perspective. Anytime that you make a legal argument that you believe in, and the judge doesn’t believe in it, you are absolutely surprised. There have been times that I have argued a motion, and I absolutely 100% believed in it. The judge doesn’t believe in it. That doesn’t change my beliefs.
Does Your Attorney Should Stand by His or Her Convictions? Attorney Sloan Believes 100% in His Arguments and Will Pursue a Decision up to the Court of Appeals
My belief is that the judge is wrong. Even if it goes up to the Court of Appeals, and the Court of Appeals believes that my argument was incorrect, I still believe in it. There are some cases to this day that I believe that the Court of Appeals decision was absolutely wrong.
Attorney Sloan Believes in Upholding His Clients Inherent Constitutional Rights
All I can really do is keep fighting the issue, and hope that the court reconsiders it one day. One of my biggest concerns is that little by little, people’s constitutional rights have been chipped away. The person’s Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment Rights and Sixth Amendment Rights, little by little, are disappearing. We got a United States Supreme Court decision a couple of years ago that basically said a person has to speak up and tell the officer that they want to remain silent under the constitutional rights. It’s not enough to just be quiet; you have to tell the officer that you’re being quiet.
It’s absolutely ridiculous. All we can do is fight the good fight, and argue for what you believe in, and hope that the judge see it that way as well.
