The role of the typical defense attorney is far from an easy one on any given day, and the average defense attorney is likely to have a full caseload at all times – especially if they are working as a public defender. A defense attorney will also see a wide variety of cases, from sexual assault cases to property damage cases to car accident cases. Some defense attorneys, such as the sexual assault lawyer or property damage attorney, will specialize in one type of criminal defense, while many an other defense attorney will choose to dabble in many different kinds of criminal defenses.
Car accidents cases are particularly prominent, as there are as many as six million car accidents occurring over the span of each and every year here in the United States alone. Though there can certainly be many causes of car accidents, the average criminal defense attorney is likely to see many a drunk driving and DUI case over the course of the years. After all, it’s been estimated that as many as 300,000 people will drive while drunk over the course of just one single day here in the United States, though only about 4,000 (or fewer) of these people will actually end up being arrested on a daily basis. All in all, a habitual drunk driver is actually likely to get away with driving drunk as many as 80 times before finally being apprehended.
And far too often, drunk driving ends in car accidents and tragedy. The statistics that have been gathered on the subject back up this claim. They show that for each and every two minutes that pass, a new person will have become injured here in the United States in a drunk driving related incident. In addition to this, very nearly 30 people will actually end up dying in drunk driving accidents over the course of each and every day.
And as any criminal defense attorney can tell you, alcohol is not the only culprit behind the average DUI and car crash related to an intoxicated driver. In addition to alcohol, many people will choose to use other substances before getting behind the wheel as well, and these substances can be both legal and illegal substances alike. Unfortunately, such choices actually lead to about 16% of all car and other such motor vehicle accidents that will occur over the course of the year here in the United States alone, let alone throughout the rest of the world as a whole.
Of course, car accidents and other such motor vehicle accidents are far from the only cases that the average criminal defense attorney will deal with. In addition to these types of cases, sexual assault cases are quite prominent as well on a countrywide scale. Unfortunately, however, sexual assault is far underreported here in the United States, considered the least reported type of violent crime in the entirety of the country. There are many reasons that women and men alike might not report themselves as the victims of sexual assault, from fear of being blamed for their assault to fear of going through the legal system with no conviction of their assaulter occurring at the end of the case. This means that only just over a quarter of people who have been the victims of any type of sexual assault will actually ever report it to legal authorities, making sexual assault a tricky thing to handle in all aspects, to say the least.
However, the vast majority of sexual assaults that are reported are true events that have occurred. The occurrence of falsely reporting a sexual assault is actually very rare indeed, and has only been found to make up about 2% of all reported cases that are handled by law enforcement professionals. Therefore, an accusation of sexual assault or other sexual misconduct is hugely important – and deserves to be taken very seriously indeed.
At the end of the day, criminal law on the whole is complex and very varied. Criminal defense lawyers have a great deal of work cut out for them, and the role of a defense attorney is a very difficult one.
