Assault & Homicide Lawyer

Speaker: Andrew Gay, Jr., Philadelphia Criminal Defense Lawyer

“In a criminal matter, preparation is key. Whether you are walking into a preliminary hearing room, or you are preparing for trial.

When I’m preparing for your criminal trial, I will look over every scrap of evidence that exists. I will look at police reports, witness statements, 911 tapes, transcripts of 911 tapes, preliminary hearing testimony, anything that is available for me will have been thoroughly reviewed and discussed with you before we walk in.

I will know what each individual witness has to say about the most important issues in your trial. And it’s honing in on those important issues and the differences in testimony between the prosecution witnesses and the defense witnesses that will better prepare me to make sure that the correct argument is made to your jury.

In order to make sure that I’m able in your criminal trial to attack the witnesses that are testifying against you, I make sure that I look at each and every statement and compare it to their prior testimony at a preliminary hearing to make sure that there is no way for them to change their story, to make sure that there’s no way for them to then embellish upon what they previously told the police, or what they previously testified to in court. And many times, being able to attack a witness based on prior inconsistent testimony is what helps us win criminal trials.

It’s very important for you as the client to make sure that you have someone on your side from the very beginning of the case. So waiting to hire a lawyer until after the preliminary hearing many times is a big mistake, because if the lawyer who’s representing you at trial also properly prepared for your preliminary hearing and interviewed your witnesses prior to your preliminary hearing, the trial result is going to be much better.”