Presentencing

JM: Tell us about the presentencing process:
Shawn*: I had to spend quite a bit of time in the law library to insure that my sentence was within the federal sentencing guidelines. In my case there was no pretrial intervention or anything of that nature.

JM: Did you have police stop by your house for questioning?
Shawn: No, there were no police who came to question me because I was incarcerated for a probation violation.

JM: What was your court appearance like?
Shawn: My court appearance was very awkward because my rights were repeatedly and blatently violated. I knew that I had a 6th amendment right to effective assistance of counsel; however, the court would appoint attorneys that would just stand there to give the appearance of legal representation and not object to legal violations. By the time my hearing was scheduled I had gone through 6 court appointed Attorneys. Each Attorney would tell me “the court can do what ever they wanted to do”; as if I had no rights at all.

JM: How long was the court appearance?
Shawn:There were about 3 actual court appearances which lasted approximately 3 hours.

* - Names have been changed

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