Adam Farkas, a partner in the law practice of Farkas & Crowley of West Palm Beach, Florida, discusses the why and how of the firm’s focus on serious crimes. Through a contract with the Office of Regional Conflict Counsel during their first year as a firm, they began working with clients who were already charged and in jail. They also took over cases that had been continued and sitting untouched and got them to trial. This experience quickly gave them a reputation for being strong and aggressive criminal defense counsel. Private client calls followed quickly.
Focusing on Serious Crimes in West Palm Beach Florida
Transcript:
” Farkas & Crowley really became pretty well known in all the jails and in the neighborhoods for handling very serious crimes. We got known that way by we had an independent contract our first year of Farkas & Crowley with the Office of Regional Conflict Counsel. What that is, it’s like a public defender’s office. When there’s a conflict of interest, what if they want to plead out against each other? There’s a conflict of interest, so any case that has two defendants or anything, the next case goes through the Office of Regional Conflict Counsel. It’s a government agency, but we were hired as independent contractors.
That contract allowed us to cover an entire felony division, so we had everything from first-degree murder all the way down to simple grand theft. In a year, we tried more serious felony cases than any other firm and, actually, more than any public defenders even tried. We have a full felony division, including sex crimes and homicide. The public defenders who do those cases, they don’t even have a full docket. They just either handle their sex crimes, or they just handle their homicide, or they handle lower-level cases. We have the entire division of cases ranging anywhere from 80 cases at a time to 120. I’m in the jail five times a week talking to different clients.
What also happened is, the division we had to take over, a previous attorney just dumped it over Christmas, and he didn’t do anything with the files. He had not taken – done any trials. We had about two and a half years of cases that were just sitting on trial dockets. At docket call, the judge said no more continuances. We end up having to try back-to-back to back-to-back felonies to get not only the experience but to get the caseload down. At a point in time, I was even picking a jury while waiting for another verdict. That’s how much trials we were doing in the first year, one after another.
Every single trial is completely different. Even if it has the exact same charge, it’ll never be the same way. It’ll have different prosecutors. It’ll have different judges. It’ll have different jurors, and you will learn something new every single case and get better every single case. By now, being 12 years out, we’ve tried hundreds of serious felonies.
There’s a county or a city out in Palm Beach County called Belle Glade. They produce the most NFL players of any city in the world, but that’s the only way they get out. It is completely impoverished. It is poor. It is rural, and it is – has a very high crime rate, as you can imagine. There was attempted murders. Every time somebody shot at somebody else, even without hitting them, attempted murder, attempted murder, attempted murder. We end up trying so many attempted murders with the firearm cases and getting so many not guilties that the firm’s name was in every jail cell for every serious crime.
What ended up happening is we kept getting calls for serious crimes privately and not so much for DUI. You’ll find that about 90% of private defense attorneys really just do DUI and DUSes and lower-level misdemeanors because that’s where the money is. People come in, and it’s a mill, DUIs, DUIs, DUIs, a thousand – even if they don’t make a lot of money, they just do a lot of cases. There’s really no stress. They may go to trial one, two times a year, and it’s a DUI. Most private defense attorneys you’ll find won’t do 10 felony trials in a 5-year basis.
We continue to be known as an aggressive firm. We continue to have more trials cases on dockets than most other firms because of how aggressive we are. The flipside of that is, being known about being so aggressive, we end up getting better plea offers at the last minute. When we’re ready to bring a jury in, the state can see we’re not going to fold. We’re actually not going to accept the plea offer, and then, at the last minute, boom, boom, boom, wow, they really lowered to what we were looking for 12 months ago. While my client was sitting in custody, we could’ve wrapped this case up, but because the state dragged it out and I guess tries to play chicken sometimes, we’re very well known. It ends up helping plea offers too, so it doesn’t mean just hire us for trial because we’re great. We are, but it also ends up resulting in better plea deals than would normally be found.”
Criminal Defense Lawyers Farkas & Crowley of West Palm Beach, Florida
Both attorneys, Adam Farkas and Jacqueline Crowley, have considerable experience and strong legal backgrounds. Together they serve their clients in both criminal defense and family law cases. As Jacqueline says, you are getting two lawyers for the price of one. Call us today to discuss your criminal defense case.
