By Shawn Moniz on Friday, May 9 2008


BayNews9.com now has an article online speaking on the Nick Hogan trial which start today at 1:30pm EST, in the article BayNews9's legal analyst Joe Episcopo gives more insight on what an "Open Plea" is. Nick Hogan is set to enter a open plea when he enters the court room today.

Episcopo had to say on Open Pleas:

"In an open plea you're basically exposing yourself to the maximum sentence which is five years in this case," said Bay News 9 legal expert Joe Episcopo.

"Now the reason you do an open plea is because the state attorney is offering you something that you don't want and you think you can do better with the judge. In order to do that in order to get around the state attorney's offer you must plead openly and take your chances with the judge who probably will not tell you ahead of time what he or she is going to do."

"You know you can't win a trial. You don't like the offer by the state. So, the middle ground is to see what you can get from the court."

On a possible sentence

"The defendant is clearly guilty, he was driving recklessly," said Bay News 9 legal expert Joe Episcopo. "It resulted in a serious injury to his passenger, there's numerous eyewitnesses to the reckless driving. So, to go to trial under those circumstances and lose you may very well get five years. You may get maxed out going to trial on a case where there really is no issue."

"It's not triable because you're not going to win. You're not going to convince a jury that you're not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You're going to go through all of that expense and all of that anxiety for everybody including the judge and the prosecutor just to what, to prove what point? Nothing. You're going to be found guilty and you're going to get maxed if you're not careful."

"While it carries five years the guidelines recommend up to one year of confinement. It could either be in county jail or in state prison. If the recommendation is a year, the recommended guideline sentence, then they would be going below the guidelines, considerably below the guidelines, and thirty days would be a very successful result for the defense attorney."

"I can't imagine him getting nothing when the guidelines recommend a year - including his bad driving record. "He seems to drive as fast as he wants whenever he wants and it's caught up with him. That's an aggravating factor that's going to play a role in sentencing."

To read the full article, click here