As the transitional stage continues in the Greene County Attorney’s office with County Attorney Nic Martino’s retirement coming at the end of the year, Assistant County Attorney Thomas Laehn has been developing different strategies in handling criminal cases.

Laehn tells Raccoon Valley Radio there’s been a stigma in the county about the frequency of using probation as a penalty in criminal cases. However, he points out that Greene County is only allotted ten trial dates per year for criminal cases and last year alone, there were 290. While he doesn’t agree that probation is an appropriate penalty for most of the cases he prosecutes, he does believe that plea agreements are needed to resolve some. He adds that a judge isn’t bound by the plea agreement and can impose whatever penalty they see fit in their opinion. Laehn argues that it seems that more times than not, when a defendant agrees to go to prison in a plea agreement, the judge imposes a more lenient sentence.

“And this has been very frustrating for me as a prosecutor. When a plea agreement is negotiated maybe over a period of weeks or months, where a criminal defendant will agree with jail time or prison time and then to have that agreement set aside at sentencing and a more lenient sentence imposed.”

With that being said, Laehn has changed his strategy to try and get criminals to serve jail or prison time on lesser charges when he knows the end result may be probation on the more serious charges.

“So I’ve now started refusing to agree to dismiss the lesser charge. I would be more inclined to agree to probation on the (Class) D Felony if the criminal defendant agrees to serve a 30-day jail sentence or a 60-day jail sentence on the simple misdemeanor or the serious misdemeanor that’s attached to that felony level crime. And that way we can ensure that there is some penalty being imposed.”

Laehn believes this strategy has been working to change the stigma in the county, and even though probation might still be the end result, he feels it’s good the defendant still serves some time in jail. To hear more from Laehn, listen to today’s Community State Bank in Paton Let’s Talk Greene County program.