This lawyer defends his clients in court who is accused of criminal activities that can range from a felony to serious crimes. If found guilty, his client could pay a fine, perform community service, serve years in prison, or even receive the death penalty. The job of a criminal defense attorney is to either release his client or get them the lightest sentence possible. To achieve this, criminal defense lawyers can use several defenses.

Affirmative criminal defense

Some criminal defense lawyers will attempt to minimize the prosecution's evidence by showing it is not true. In this defense, the lawyer, along with the client produces evidence in support of the defense. For example, if the defendant is charged with first-degree murder, which means that the client planned the murder before happened, they may choose to provide an alibi witness. This is someone who testifies that the defendant could not have committed the crime and gives them an alibi for the time the murder was committed.

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Insanity defense

This defense was made popular by movies and television shows. Unfortunately, it is a defense that is not frequently used or often successful. When criminal defense lawyers use this defense it states that their client did commit the crime but did not know what they did was wrong.

To use this defense successfully the client will need to have a serious defect or mental illness at the time the crime was done. It can be risky to rely on this defense because the client is admitting to the crime but if the jury does not believe the client is insane they can find the client guilty and hand-downs a harder sentence than they may have if they had not used this defense.

Coercion and Duress

This is an affirmative criminal defense lawyers used that states that their client was forced to commit the crime due to being threatened with unlawful force. The force does not actually have to happen.. Just the threat can be enough to satisfy this form of defense. This threat does not have to be against their client. It could be against someone else like a family member. This defense cannot be invoked if their client's reckless actions put them in the situation that caused duress.