How Does The Main Downtown Los Angeles Court Handle Murder Cases?
Most of the murder cases that are filed and prosecuted in Los Angeles are tried at 210 West Temple – the downtown Los Angeles courthouse. This is the main courthouse in LA. This is where the District Attorney's office has their main office.
The head DA is there, and pretty much the whole command center of the DA's office is there. Probably most of the cases that are filed in Los Angeles—and definitely most of the murder cases—are filed there, and the way that the DA's office and the downtown court system handle these cases is that they put the best investigators on them.
They put the best prosecutors on them. They'll assign a prosecutor to a murder case in Los Angeles right from the beginning, and that prosecutor will carry it all through from beginning to end. Hence, they get consistency in their decisions and make them make sense.
Murder Cases Are Aggressively Prosecuted
So, you can expect they will treat these cases very harshly. They're going to put as many resources as necessary to try to get the conviction. That's one thing that people don't realize. They think we're going to do this. We're going to do that.
They think that some singular brain is thinking about these murder cases in LA, but it's not. They have a system set up—the District Attorney's office and the court system—that is almost set up like corporations and big bureaucracies.
When these cases come in, the government already has all the resources ready. It has unlimited funds to prosecute, handle, and punish them. The legislature and the public are behind it.
Lawyer With Experience in the Criminal Courts Building
So, if you have a loved one or you are charged with a murder case, you have to get an experienced criminal defense attorney who has handled cases there. I've been dealing with these cases for twenty-five years, so I know the ins and outs of that court system — how the case will be sent to Department 100 on the Fifth Floor when it's ready to be tried.
Then, they are going to find a judge for you, and you have one opportunity to get rid of a judge in any murder case. Typically, you're going to have at least twenty peremptory challenges in any murder case — which means you can get rid of twenty jurors that you don't like as you sit there and try to pick them.
There are a lot of different nuances and things going on in these murder cases in Los Angeles. What I try to do is make sure that I do everything that I possibly can to challenge the prosecution at every turn, at every step of the way. I will do the necessary investigation. I get the evidence that is going to support my client's theory of the murder case.
This is crucial when it comes to properly defending a murder case. Any attorney who is going to do one of these murder cases in Los Angeles has got to know that downtown system—know the judges you're dealing with, their tendencies, and what motions to file—that's another critical thing.
Sometimes, you want to try to block evidence from coming in, which is very important because prosecutors will try to get any evidence they can in a murder case to try to clean up and make your client look bad and win the case. If you're not alert as a defense attorney and aren't ready to block some of that evidence, you won't be in the best position to defend your case.
Evidence is going to be coming in that shouldn't be coming in, and you're not going to get the result that you need to be successful in a murder case in Los Angeles.
Planning is Critical in Defending a Murder Case
Planning is key in these cases. You have to plan this thing out and make the right moves because if you don't, the system is set up to try to get that criminal defendant. Everything is aligned against him.
They have a Ninth Floor in downtown Los Angeles. They call it the long-cause floor. So, if the case is going to take some time, if it's serious, if there's going to be a bunch of witnesses testify, what they're going to do is get you on the Ninth Floor. You will be in a position where you must go in front of one of the judges who does many of these criminal cases.
As a defense attorney, you must know who the judge is and what strategies you can employ to counter this huge bureaucracy. Sometimes, that can work to their disadvantage in a murder case — this whole system related to murder cases — because, sometimes, they're not set up to get some of the nuances related to these cases.
As a defense attorney, you can take advantage of that, be ready to discredit their witnesses, and show a potential jury that their case is unreliable. They have not met their burden of proving the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
