Mr. Hicks’s client was facing a Life Sentence Armed Robbery case combined with a drug case. Due to the defendant’s recidivist (repeat offender) status, a life sentence would have been imposed. This case involved multiple similar transactions (or prior crimes the prosecution attempted to inject into this case), a sellout co-defendant, a victim that only spoke Spanish, a very unsympathetic defendant, DNA evidence analyzed in Virginia, and multiple pre-trial motions. After 2 days of trial, the District Attorney dismissed the Armed Robbery charge, thereby literally saving the defendant’s life.
In this case, the victim, a Hispanic man in his 70s was beaten by a shotgun and left for dead. The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney, without conducting a full investigation, decided it was done by my client and not [name withheld] and sold out to the real perpetrator for his testimony against my client. My independent investigation shows the victim’s description to be a better fit to the clothes worn by [name withheld] rather than my client.
My cross-examination of the victim had him saying the culprit was everybody under the sun other than my client. All the DA has was [name withheld]. She gave up.
This case shows that fighting for clients requires hard work and time.