Sample Email: Upon being released on supervised OR, Martha sent an email to her public defender. She reminded her who she was, recapped some work she did on her case, and gave more evidence on her case. In this email, she gave a list of witnesses and their contact information. This is important in that the PD can then send their investigator to talk to people who can speak to the incident that took place. It is helpful to identify why those people are key to your case so that your attorney can better understand the case in front of them. To: Smith, Sonia M. Cc: De-Bug Subject: Your Client Request for a meeting Hi Sonia, This is Martha, the short Latina that you are representing in Santa Clara County court. I left you a voicemail today and wanted to see if I could meet with you about my case. I’ve gone through the police report and several witnesses have typed statements on what happened. Here is a list of witnesses: XXXXXXXX (my uncle who saw the whole incident with me and Officer YYY): (408) XXXXXXXX
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XXXXXXXX (my dad who saw the whole incident): XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX (my sister -- she didn’t see the taser incident but saw my injuries): (408) XXXXXXXX Please let me know when your available. I am available in the afternoons after 2PM. Thank you, Martha
Because Martha had done so much work in the front-end of the case (such as writing her account of the incident, having witnesses memorialize what happened through video, and reading police reports), and because her family and De-Bug were able to respond quickly when Martha was tased by the police and then subsequetly arrested, and because the public defender assigned to her case, Sonia Smith, was incredibly tenacious in her defense, Martha’s charges were all dismissed in the interest of justice. What happened to her has inspired her to pursue being a lawyer.
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