Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, lawyertalkpodcast.com I'm going to call this the Circle 270 follow up to my Q and A. And those who have seen some of the previous episodes here recently know what this is and I'll explain it real quick. Look, Circle270Media, our podcast production company here right at channel 511 in Columbus, Ohio, for our studio. And Brett with Circle270Media, often asks me follow up questions after I answer questions from our listeners. And this is one of them. This is about the Coburger case. And immediately after, Brett was asking me, well, look, wouldn't the judge have known in advance what's going on? And the question basically was, could the judge have forced Kohberger to make a statement about why he did what he did and why he killed these people? And then we started talking off the air about, well, wouldn't the judge have known? Or is the judge part of the plea deals or whatever? Because part of my answer was, look, the judge's only real remedy would be, look, I'm not going to take your plea. Then you have to go back to the drawing board, Mr.

Steve Palmer [00:00:57]:

Prosecutor, Mr. Defend, you want to go to trial in front of me, you can do it. But I'm not going to plead, accept the plea of guilty unless I hear this allocution or this statement about what happened. Now, the reality, there's always the practical reality, boots on the ground reality, the judge in inevitably would have been part of the plea discussions. Now, I don't mean in the room when the defense and the prosecutor are negotiating what they're going to plea to. I mean, what typically happens is I talk to a prosecutor, we figure out the resolution. And very often, very often, particularly in state court, federal court, this gets a little dicey. But because it may not be permitted, but in state court, we'll go talk to the judge and say, look, here's what we got going on.

Steve Palmer [00:01:41]:

Here's what we're going to propose to the court. Do you have a problem with this? Your honor? Just making sure you're on board. Or sometimes the judge will actually call us all in and say, where are we with this? Is this case going to get resolved? Are we going to trial and the parties will sort of tell the judge where we are and the judge will offer some wisdom. Now, in federal court, there's some rules that may preclude the judge from participating in plea negotiations, and that may be different than the parties going to the judge and asking them about sentencing recommendations. Maybe not. I'm not going into it. You federal practitioners know what I'm talking about. But here I think it's very likely that the judge, the trial judge knew exactly what was going on in advance.

Steve Palmer [00:02:23]:

There had been discussions with the judge in advance and everybody was on the same page. But not always. Sometimes, sometimes we go to jurisdictions where it's like the wild wild west or the judge has a closed door policy. Judges have every right to have this policy where I get a deal with the prosecutor. We're talking about what the possible sentence could be. And I look at the prosecutor and say, hey, why don't we go talk to the judge, see if he's on board with this. Prosecutor's like, eh, not so much, man. The judge doesn't participate, won't tell us.

Steve Palmer [00:02:55]:

You just gotta. You don't know what the sentence is gonna be until it happens. So we go out cold. We have no feedback whatsoever from the judge. This happened to me in a jurisdiction recently recommended sentence of probation judge gave my client a couple days in jail is on a misdemeanor. And the only thing I can tell you is that I will almost always. Almost always, not almost. I always prepare my client in those situations to.

Steve Palmer [00:03:19]:

For the possibility the judge may not go along with it. Working on a case right now there's a huge, you know, the sentence could be anywhere from zero all the way up to 60 months in prison in state court. Prosecutors recommending. Somewhere in the middle of that I'm going to be arguing. Somewhere on the bottom end of that the judge could go even higher. I've had long discussions with my client because the judge is not telling me up front what he's going to do. So Anyway, great. Circle 270 media question.

Steve Palmer [00:03:43]:

If you've got a question to follow up, hit me up in the socials. Send us a comment or a question at lawyertalkpodcast. Com off the record on the air till next time.