re: Update: Alleged Perp in custody: Garret James Ward of BR for 2nd Degree murder

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If the DA and prosecutors are willing to bring it down to manslaughter, does there give them leverage on sentencing? Seems fricked up to be brought on higher charges, in hopes you acquiesce to guilt on a lesser charge and they still get a conviction

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You're free to go to trial and fight it if you're innocent, but IIRC, the jury can still find you guilty of a lesser charge. It's a shitty deal all around, but it is what it is.

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If the DA and prosecutors are willing to bring it down to manslaughter, does there give them leverage on sentencing? Seems fricked up to be brought on higher charges, in hopes you acquiesce to guilt on a lesser charge and they still get a conviction.

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Not sure what you're saying. If he's charged with murder by the grand jury, he's not getting "higher charges", he's getting charged with what the law says he did. If by kicking in the head, he intended to kill or commit great bodily harm, and the victim died, it's a second degree murder. The fact that you reduce to plea a case doesn't mean that's what it really was in tbe beginning.

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Judges sentence except for in capital cases. Murder carries mandatory life, though. And life means life in LA.

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Murder is murder. Hate to see two lives lost to
drunken stupidity.

I agree with an earlier post. This guy walks...and
New Orleans will burn, especially if the major networks
pick up this story and run with it.

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You're free to go to trial and fight it if you're innocent, but IIRC, the jury can still find you guilty of a lesser charge. It's a shitty deal all around, but it is what it is

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Nobody is going to hire a person convicted of manslaughter to show houses privately.

I'd take my chances. I don't think I could be happy with myself serving 10 years without a fight.

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didn’t realize he was actually locked up, I thought it was all a joke earlier in the thread. He has struggled with drugs so I’d imagine a drug charge or something similar

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I just looked at the St. Tammany prison roster and his name is on there, sad. I’m not going to post his name but surely some of you know his irl name.

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Not sure what you're saying. If he's charged with murder by the grand jury, he's not getting "higher charges", he's getting charged with what the law says he did. If by kicking in the head, he intended to kill or commit great bodily harm, and the victim died, it's a second degree murder. The fact that you reduce to plea a case doesn't mean that's what it really was in tbe beginning.

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I was saying the DA using a higher charge, as a crutch, to secure a plea for a lesser charge.

You can always appeal a conviction, but that's no way to approach a case as the likelihood of success is so low. But there's no vehicle for a court to say "that sentence for murder was excessive, the judge should have given you 30".

If he takes a plea, he waives his right to appeal.

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I just looked at the St. Tammany prison roster and his name is on there, sad.

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He's on his 3rd strike.

Ward will probably get out before SS.

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He's on his 3rd strike.

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We have that here?

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I was saying the DA using a higher charge, as a crutch, to secure a plea for a lesser charge

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To each their own, by it doesn't appear he was overcharged in this case, as of yet.