"My nephew was arrested for posession, he took a plea agreement, the cops were under investigation?

Question

"My nephew was arrested for possession, he took a plea agreement, the cops were under investigation, now one is fired, the other transferred and everyone who was waiting for trial has had their charges dropped! The CA says tough. Can we do anything?"

Answer 1

"Can we do anything?" You can ask the court to allow him to revoke his guilty plea, however the court is not required to do so.

Answer 2

Possibly.  In California you have 6 months to withdraw your guilty plea for good cause under Penal Code Section 1018.  Most states have a similar provision.  The withdrawal of a plea is extremely complicated, you might have to show that the DA knew that the cops were dirty at the time the plea was taken.

Absent that you have to "collaterally"  attack the plea.  Your argument, after failing the withdrawal, is that the prosecution knew about the officer misconduct and didn't give you the information.  This is known as a Brady violation.  Most likely you would be filing some type of habeas writ at the trial court level and then move on to appeals should you loose.

If you win the motion, the case goes forward just as if the kid had never pled guilty, it doesn't mean the case is dismissed.  You would likely then file a Pitchess motion in order to have the officer's personnels files produced at trial.  Since the cops are clearly dirty, that's when the DA would likely dismiss.

All of this is very expensive.  I'm guessing by "CA" you meant "DA".  Why you are talking to the DA makes no sense to me, why aren't you talking to your lawyer?  Oh, and all this I described above is very expensive.

One way to get around the price issue is to see if the local public defenders are already doing this kind of motion for any other defendant who has been busted by these cops.  It's likely you'll find that various lawyers are already filing joint motions.  You need to get on that wagon.

If you liked this, give me a best answer.

edit.  Ah, didn't know that about the CA/DA thing.  6k-10k sounds about right, if the fee includes the motion to withdraw.  A withdrawal motion does not require the "CAs" agreement.  Brady violations are federal, and therefore universal, law.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Ma...

In order to get more information on the cops, a public records request would be a good start, but Virginia must have some kind of system for getting at the personnel file.  In California, it's called Pitchess.  Here's an example. http://home.earthlink.net/~bdega/crimina...

Withdrawal

http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/o...