Federal Crimes Attorney in Alexandria, Virginia
How are federal crimes different from state crimes?
How are federal crimes different from state crimes?
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many many things could be a federal or a
state crime for examp example any drug
case um almost any fraud case so it’s
just whichever Court it ends up in now
the vast majority of cases in America
are prosecuted in a state court and if
there’s any sort of pattern to it it
would generally be that the more serious
ones are picked up by the US attorney’s
office not always but that’s generally
the pattern so h money amounts more
drugs more bigger organizations that
kind of thing that pattern doesn’t
always hold but that’s roughly how that
is any kind of a internet related crime
could be Federal if they wanted to
generally murder and rape these kind of
violent crimes are not federal unless
they were on federal property it’s a lot
of the same kind of things the courts
operate under the same basic structure
but they are quite different the laws
are different different the rules are
different federal court is more formal
um the way that the cases are
negotiated are is different um often the
penalties are higher in federal court
not always but they can be and one of
the biggest things about it is the
benefit of pleading guilty or I would
say the punishment for fighting your
case makes it riskier to go to trial in
a federal case because if you plead
guilty the penalties are so
substantially lower and sometimes that’s
true in state court if you turn down a
plea agreement or for other reasons but
it isn’t as Stark of a difference so the
leverage that the federal case cases
courts have prosecutors and FBI have
against someone is much higher because
one they usually don’t bring a case that
hasn’t been thoroughly investigated you
know they’ve had time to look into do it
and brought it because they think they
have what they need to win the
case that’s not often not true in State
Court people are arrested right on the
street you know there’s a different
level of investigation and there are
many cases in state court that are
simply not very strong it’s not of very
often not the case in federal court and
two because what I said before the
penalty imposed for going to trial is
high the courts call it a penalty it’s a
benefit for pleading guilty it’s not a
penalty for going to trial but same
thing there are less trials in federal
court um but the work involved is still
intense in terms of getting the right
result and trying to get the person
where they need to be
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Alexandria, VA criminal defense attorney Chris Leibig talks about how federal crimes are different from state crimes.
