FEDERAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYER TACTICS IN CONSPIRACY CASES:

(1) initial appearance — meet client, tell them to say nothing. Argue (fruitlessly) to magistrate that presumption of no bond is overcome. Client goes to sit in Pretrial detention.

(2) get discovery from government. Realize there’s six months of wiretaps of your client slinging dope on behalf of someone named “Trucker Steve.”

(3) review the discovery with your client. “That’s not my voice on there.”

“Six minutes ago you gave your address and said you’d be home after leaving your job.”

“You think the jury will pick up on that?”

(4) tell the prosecutor “look I’m just not sure you have enough. Sure you might get my guy on the ten grams in his car when you arrested him but the rest of that ghost dope I’ll get tossed at sentencing.”

(5) after the AUSA is done chuckling at your chutzpah, they casually mention they’d love to know who Trucker Steve is and there might be a 3553 or 5k1.1 motion for the first nut to crack.

(6) in a three hour session in a tiny jail cell, you try hard to convince your client to give up trucker Steve. “You face a mandatory minimum if you don’t! This isn’t state court. You are NOT going to get probation.”

(7) you show them your best Guidelines calculation and give them the code section which sets out mandatory minimums. “That’s really unfair!” they whine.

“No shit, which is why I am trying to protect you.”

“Ok I’ll tell them about trucker steve.”

(8) the noobcakes defense attorney runs back to the AUSA, “my client will talk gimme gimme.” The seasoned vet brings in his investigator.

(9) “tell me, in the presence of this witness who has sworn you to tell the truth, about trucker Steve. Because the government already has an idea, and they will ask you questions they already know to make sure you’re telling the truth. If you try to lie to them, they will know.”

(10) your client still thinks, “ok but I can fudge some things to make me look better, right?” Fucking wrong. This isn’t Barney Fife. In general, the feds have their shit a lot more together than state cops. If your guy is talking, he better be truthful.

(11) now that you have a sworn statement and you’ve investigated it and your guy seems to be truthful, you go to the AUSA and ask, “if my guy could tell you XYZ, good enough for a 5k or a favorable motion?”

(12) if the AUSA says yes, only then do you set the debrief. Otherwise, you just take your acceptance of responsibility points and hear to sentencing.

(13) all of which is to say, if my client’s dumb mug was pasted on the news in the Capitol taking a doody on Paul Ryan’s old office, I’d be asking them to think real hard about that interview with the feds. Real, real hard.