Q: Before a jury trial why does the state offer sometimes be higher than the previous offer that the state had before?
For example if someone is offered 1 year and then the next offer is 3 years and the next offer 6 months.
A: You should not be going to a jury trial without a lawyer. if you have a lawyer, you should be asking this question of your lawyer. It is not uncommon for prosecutors to play hardball with plea offers, steadily ratcheting up the seriousness of the crimes they are willing to let a defendant plead guilty to as trial draws closer and the defendant continues to hold out. It's a pressure tactic: take a deal early in the process an save the prosecutor all the time and work developing the case for trial, or the deal gets worse. Other times, as the case progresses and the defense lawyer learns more about the case, the defendant and the weaknesses in the prosecutor's case, and with candid discussions with the prosecutor, the deal might get softened near the end and a more fair resolution and deal is reached, so the deal gets better. Really impossible to speculate in a vacuum. Every case is different. What works in one scenario does not necessarily play out in another. That's why having experienced counsel matters.
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