Can a Husband Hire a Criminal Defense Lawyer for his Wife in State College, PA?

If your wife was arrested for a crime, you might be looking for a lawyer and trying to figure out how to help with the charges.  If you are not a lawyer yourself, you won’t be able to represent your wife in court or argue to the judge on her behalf.  However, you can hire a lawyer that can help her.  State College criminal defense lawyer Andrew Shubin explains what the process of hiring a lawyer for your wife’s criminal case looks like and what you can do to get the ball rolling on her defense case.

How to Hire a Lawyer for Your Wife in State College, PA

If your wife was arrested, she might have contacted you as her “one phone call.”  Otherwise, you might have found out through someone else who was with her at the time of the arrest or because the police called you to inform you.  From there, you might not be able to do anything except show up and pay bail to get her out.  If bail was denied or is too expensive, your next step should be to call a lawyer for help.

Once you call an attorney for a free case consultation, you can tell them what you know and ask them to represent your wife in her case.  Our attorneys will have to meet with your wife and get her permission to represent her, but after we’ve squared away all of the permission issues, we will be all set to represent your wife in her case.

Can a Husband Help with his Wife’s Criminal Defense Case in State College?

Only licensed attorneys are allowed to represent criminal defendants in court cases.  This means that you might not be able to stand up for your wife in the courtroom, and you will instead have to have a criminal defense attorney handle all aspects of the case.  As the husband, you might also have limited access to the case and information about your wife’s charges because of very important ethical rules and standards.

In a criminal case where someone else is paying for the lawyer, it is important to understand that the one facing charges is the lawyer’s “client.”  Even if someone else is paying for the lawyer, this means that the defendant is the one who holds onto the attorney-client privilege.

This means that any information your wife shares with us about her case cannot be shared with anyone else without her explicit permission – even her husband.  Some people might think that this means your loved one is hiding something from you that they don’t want you to know – which might not be the case at all.

Your wife can usually still share whatever information she wants with you directly – that is usually protected under spousal privilege and spousal immunity, which we can give her legal advice on.  However, we cannot share anything with anyone unless your wife gives us permission to do so.  If we share information about your wife’s case with someone else, it might actually hurt her attorney-client privilege and make it harder for us to keep her case confidential and represent her.

Another important consideration to understand is that even though you might be paying for the lawyer, the defendant is the one who gets to decide whether to take the case to trial or enter into a plea agreement.  Even the attorney cannot decide that for the client, and it’s a decision that has to be left to the defendant to make for herself.  As her attorney, we can help counsel your wife on what we think her best move is, but even we do not get to make that decision for her.

Getting a Lawyer for Your Wife in a State College, PA Criminal Case

When you hire a lawyer for your wife, you are doing her a great service to help protect her constitutional rights and defend against the charges she faces.  In a criminal case, the prosecution will often do everything in their power to see a conviction.  With an attorney standing between your wife and the charges, there is an experienced legal representative who can stand up against unfair rulings, unjust charges, and inappropriate evidence.

Our lawyer can also work to fight bail decisions and get your wife out of jail ahead of her trial.  Trying to fight your charges while behind bars makes it harder to access your lawyer, care for your family, work to support yourself, and perform other simple tasks.  If people are innocent until proven guilty and the government cannot show a good reason for keeping your wife in jail, then we will do what we can to fight to get her released.

Our lawyers can also work to block unfair evidence at trial.  If your wife’s charges were based on evidence that was collected illegally or seized after an illegal traffic stop or some other problematic encounter, we will fight to have the evidence and the charges thrown out.

We can also negotiate with the prosecution to try to have charges dropped and reduced, or to arrange a plea bargain for reduced penalties.

Call to Hire a State College Criminal Defense Lawyer for your Wife

If your wife was arrested on criminal charges in State College, call our State College criminal lawyer for help with the case.  A husband can absolutely hire a lawyer for his wife’s defense, and our attorney is available for free legal consultations, so there is no risk in calling us today.  Call The Law Office of Andrew Shubin at (814) 826-3586 to set up a free consultation for your wife’s case.