Personal Contributions

Throughout my time at the Prosecutor’s Office I have been able to learn a lot about the process of charging, filing, and trying a case. One specific aspect that I have been working on is writing the probable cause affidavits (PCA). PCAs are the documents written by the prosecutor’s office or sheriff’s office that outlines why an individual should be tried with a crime. It is the official document that shows that there is probable cause that someone did a crime. The judge then examines the document and decides whether or not that individual should be charged with that crime or not. In deciding whether or not to charge someone, the prosecutor’s office wants to only choose cases that they know that they will win. This means choosing cases that the prosecutor’s think will try well in front of a jury. Even though most cases never go as far as being tried in front of a jury, prosecutor’s are always preparing for the case to go to trial. In writing a PCA, it is important that the right crime is being tried, since in most cases there are multiple different potential crimes to charge the defendant with. Part of my job in writing the PCAs has been deciding which crimes to charge the defendant with. This process involves knowing the Indiana codes, the lesser offenses, and aggravators for each crime. Through writing PCAs I have learned a lot about the intricacy of codes as well as the gravity of charging someone with a crime. 

In the process of deciding to charge someone with a crime, often the prosecutor’s need more information. Another part of my job has been writing the sheriff’s office to ask for them to continue the investigation in a specific way. The prosecutor’s office has to work closely with the sheriff’s office because all information that we use to charge a crime, comes through the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office does all the investigative work and then the prosecutor’s office puts the pieces together in a way that follows the Indiana code and can find someone guilty of a crime. Often the sheriff’s office does not fully understand the law, so they miss an element of the crime that must be shown in order for the defendant to be charged. For instance, I was working on an alleged breaking and entering case. It was clear that the defendant was in someone else’s home and took a TV without permission to take the TV. However, the officer’s had not asked the right questions to determine whether or not the defendant had actually entered the house without permission. Therefore, instead of being charged as a breaking and entering, the crime was charged as a theft, which is a lesser offense. In that case, instead of asking the officer to follow up and get the information necessary to charge it as a breaking and entering, the prosecutor chose to just try it as a theft because the time and money it would take to get that extra information was not worth the higher charge.

Being involved in this process of determining what to charge has been truly eye opening. I have learned that what someone is charged with has so much more to do with the prosecutor’s strategic decision making rather than finding the “truth” of what happened. Prosecutor’s choose to charge what they think they can win or what they think they can get a plea agreement out of. I have been able to see the ways in which the law code leaves room for prosecutors to charge greater and lesser offenses in order to get the defendant to settle to a plea agreement.