When it comes to determining appropriate sentences, prosecuting attorneys aren’t the only ones who face challenges.

Defense attorneys have their own set of issues as they work to effectively represent their clients.

Regional Deputy Public Defender Nick Aemisegger and fellow public defender Noel Larrivee said those issues can sometimes lead the public to misunderstand what is actually going on in their cases.

Aemisegger said they start by assessing the case and make sure they understand all the facts. Then they look for any weaknesses or discrepancies in the case. Even after charges are filed, there is some delay before hearings begin in order to provide time for attorneys to prepare.

It is at that point they start engaging the Flathead County Attorney’s Office, he said.

But even at the beginning it isn’t that simple, Larrivee maintained, as defendants are not usually charged with only one count even if they committed a single criminal act.

“The county attorney has the discretion in charging and a lot of times what will happen is they will charge multiple offenses with an expectation that they will concede or give away one or more of those multiple offenses to get to the core conduct,” Larrivee said.

He said that leads to the public forming misconceptions that the suspect committed multiple offenses because they don’t understand that the wording of state statutes allows the charging of multiple crimes for a single offense.

In the same way, according to Aemisegger, a suspect might be charged with the most severe crime possible in order to provide a wide range of possible final charges.

“That gives rise to a situation where you might have what looks like a serious charge getting reduced to a charge that is less serious, like assault with a weapon that gets reduced to criminal endangerment,” Aemisegger said. “When something like that happens, it’s usually an indicator that the facts were bad or that there’s problems with the arrest, and rather than losing the case altogether, the state would like to get something.”

So rather than roll the dice and let the judge decide whether or not to dismiss the case entirely, he said, sometimes the County Attorney’s Office will offer a deal reducing the charge to a misdemeanor or a lesser felony.

“There are a lot of different factors that go into the decision of whether or not to reach an agreement with the state and what that agreement looks like at the end of the day,” Aemisegger said.

But if the public doesn’t like how that agreement ends up, whether due to their lack of knowledge of the case, their personal opinion of the suspect, their relation to a victim or their thoughts on a particular type of crime, they can be very vocal in their opposition.

“If you’ve got something that’s gone from, say, a serious sex crime to something like disorderly conduct, well, people hear about that and they’re screaming and yelling and there’s an outcry, people want blood and it’s not fair, and [they say] Ed Corrigan is soft on crime — which really makes me laugh when I hear that because that certainly has not been our experience in dealing with the Flathead County Attorney’s Office,” Aemisegger said.

Particularly in sex crime cases, however, he said, it isn’t appropriate to just come out and drag an alleged victim through the mud by publicly describing issues with the victim that affected the case.

“There are issues like that that sometimes exist in these cases that, for obvious reasons, can’t be explained to the public,” Aemisegger said.

But the backlash that comes from the public when they perceive a case isn’t being pursued hard enough despite not knowing the details behind the decisions being made in the case is a source of frustration to Aemisegger.

Another frustration is trying to find the balance between the victim’s desires for justice and the suspect’s right to effective representation and, if convicted, to a punishment that fits the facts of their case.

“It seems like a lot of times if someone’s been victimized by a crime, whether it’s a property crime or some assault, the victim oftentimes wants blood,” Aemisegger said. “The victim’s perspective is ‘I’ve been harmed and somebody needs to pay a price for what they’ve done to me. This isn’t fair. We need to crack down on this kind of behavior to stop it.’”

But Aemisegger said that when a relative of that same victim commits a crime, the victim has an entirely different perspective. It becomes, he said, a case of “You don’t know what [the suspect] has been through ... the worst thing you can do is send him to prison where he’ll learn to be a better criminal. What he really needs is help.”

“So the very people that are screaming the loudest about vengeance and vindication and prison time and their ounce of flesh, when the table is turned, all of a sudden they have a perspective they’ve never had before,” he said. “There are two sides to every coin, and it’s hard to see that, depending on which side of the coin you’re on.”

Aemisegger said that it is helpful to understand the bigger picture and take part in a larger dialogue about what to do with people that are committing crimes. He opined that there is not a lot of serious crime in this jurisdiction, comparatively speaking, and that a lot of the suspects are young people who probably didn’t get a lot of direction and are making bad decisions.

“And so the question becomes, what do we want to do with them?” he said. “Do we send them to prison? Is that the best thing to do? Maybe for some of these young men or women for certain crimes, but very seldom is that the answer.”

He argued that statement holds true even if you look at the issue from a strictly economic perspective.

“If you’ve got somebody who you can put some safeguards in place to ensure that the community can be protected from a given defendant’s behavior, is it not better to have them be a productive member of society and paying taxes rather than sitting some place where we’re providing all of their meals, we’re paying for the huge overhead associated with providing that level of care? Which is better?”

The final misconception Aemisegger said people sometimes have is that the positive relationship that has developed between his office and the County Attorney’s Office is some kind of good old boys’ club or otherwise dubious distinction.

“It doesn’t mean we go out and have beers together and talk about these cases and how they can be resolved; that’s not what happens,” he said.

“What that means is we both understand our respective roles in the criminal justice system, and that makes it easier to understand that even though we might disagree, it’s not personal, we’re just doing our jobs,” Aemisegger said.

“We’re going to do the best job we can for our clients, they’re going to do the best job they can for the state, but at the end of the day, if the jury has to make the decision, the jury has to make the decision.”