re: Advocate columnist Matthew Harris believes Hill is done at LSU

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From what I've learned today, you've repeated bad information six times (although I'll take the blame for some of it, because I worded it poorly by asking if the original charge mattered...It would have been more appropriate to ask if the entire case mattered, or just the plea the case resulted in).

I ran into some attorney friends and they told me that a judge and attorney can indeed consider all the facts surrounding a case when considering how to handle a probation violation, not just the plea itself.

The prosecutor has all the right in the world, I'm told, to argue that the plea was a lenient deal for the defendant based on facts surrounding the case. Those facts can be brought up again in reviewing how to handle the probation violation and can indeed be factors in deciding whether probation is revoked.

And, of course, the judge is not only allowed to consider this, but that's exactly what their discretion is about. It's about reviewing the conditions that led to the plea and reviewing the probation violation.

There are two different things. They can't use his violation of probation as a reason to change his punishment to something that's more than appropriate for what he plead to. They can't turn this into a sexual assault case again.

But they CAN use ALL THE FACTS of the case to determine whether he should serve the maximum penalty, the minimum penalty or anything in between, for the offense he plead to.

That's an important distinction to make.

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