This Houston Criminal Defense Attorney Hates It When An Offer Is Withdrawn For No Reason
Part of my job as a Houston Criminal Defense lawyer is to negotiate on behalf of my clients. In all cases the assistant district attorney (ADA) handling my client's case will make us an offer to settle the case in lieu of a trial. In some instances, the ADA will not be able to make a reasonable offer. If we decide that we do not find the offer to be appealing we reset the case to come back another day. Most of the time, the ADA will keep the offer available and will let me know if they plan on withdrawing the offer at some point. It is not standard practice for an ADA to retract an offer before we formally reject it. This rarity occurs when a new ADA is assigned to a case and they disagree with the offer that was made by their predecessor. Recently, I had a client decide that they wanted to accept the last offer made by the ADA the day before his next court setting. Since it was not a jury trial and I did not know that a new ADA was assigned to their case you can imagine what happened next. The offer was doubled by the new prosecutor. Despite detailing to the new ADA how we arrived at the proposal the offer was withdrawn. I was surprised with their final decision and I was left trying to explain this to my client. This left us with the easy decision of rejecting the new offer and proceeding to trial. Fortunately, a person accused of a crime is presumed innocent and the fact that they were willing to plea guilty at one point is excluded from their trial.
This situation can happen in any type of case from a simple marijuana possession to a Murder. It is most likely to happen in a felony case.
