Thanks man I appreciate that. I'm hoping too.
Public defender? With 4 felonies at 9 years a piece max on them? Fuck that. I hired one of the best lawyers I could. Cost me 10 grand but she was cool about letting me pay over time and not all in one sum, thank God, which I obviously couldn't have done. She's all paid off now though. Gave her the last 2 grand last week. So, if anyone is gonna get me a good deal, it's her
Idk if it's just because of how crowded the jails are in the city, but when I got popped in Queens I kinda unknowingly used a public defender and luckily got everything dropped to a violation the next day.
They moved us from cell to cell until we were in one where they had little closet looking things you went into as your name was called, and someone spoke to you about your charges real quick. I thought it was just for my arraignment, so when I finally went to see the judge I figured I would just enter my plea of 'not guilty' and have the case adjourned (and adjourned and adjourned, etc...) but low and behold there was an offer waiting for me when I got in front of the judge with some public defender standing 15 feet in front of me saying a few things about me, so I took the plea since it was down to a violation.
I never heard of anything like that though. Usually your arraignment is the first of many court cases which I was dreading having to deal with, but myself and everyone else that was locked up with me with a misdemeanor all used one of 2-3 public defenders and got the charges dropped to violations.
Now of course in the time leading up to that they were moving us from cell to cell, so I guess they put all the people with the lesser charges like myself in the same cell, and the people with felony charges went into other cells where they were probably told to get lawyers. That didn't even cross my mind though since I never used a lawyer for my arraignment before so that was nothing different, but the case being concluded right then and there was a pleasant change of pace.
If I had been pulled over 10 mins later in the next county over on LI it would have been a completely different story. In fact my co-defendent had an open case on LI when we got popped, and we got that Queens charge dropped then and there yet he's still going to court for the case he caught 5 months before that on LI. I've never heard of a case taking less than a year to be resolved on LI unless the person didn't get bailed out and got time served (or a few more months tacked on) once they saw the judge for the case a month or so after waiting to see them.