Criminal Defense

We are dedicated to providing quality support to the community and playing a role in getting justice for clients. Our services can be applied to a variety of criminal defense investigations, including but not limited to:

• Domestic violence
• Homicides
• Drug crime
• Federal crime
• White collar crime
• Fraud & theft
• Defendant background

The average criminal defense attorney bills clients for between 1000-1500 hours for a single case. In the case of criminal trials, those figures can double or even triple relative to the complexity of the case. A criminal charge added to the case can also exacerbate this. A defense attorney is the first line of defense when it comes to representing their client, and in some ways, a criminal defense investigator is the last. Much like a nurse in an emergency room catches mistakes of doctors, having a seasoned private investigator on your defense team can fill in the cracks of your case. Private investigators know that due-diligence is the name of the game in a criminal defense. That means turning over every rock and exhausting every lead in the name of getting justice for the defendant.

When you’re starting from scratch in a criminal defense case, you’ll need a private investigator who knows how to develop leads. Sometimes a criminal defense attorney will begin with very little information to generate a series of leads following the investigation of law enforcement. In cases where law enforcement personnel have been sloppy or less than diligent with their police work, the job gets that much harder. A private investigator with access to verified databases will become crucial. After meeting with the defense attorney to familiarize themselves with the case, private investigators can run comprehensive background checks on all of the relevant subjects in a criminal defense investigation and review those background checks for red flags. For instance, a person’s history with law enforcement and the criminal justice system might be cause for further investigation. In the case of a murder, a person with a criminal conviction for violence might have been overlooked by law enforcement or the criminal defense attorney. A private investigator can follow that lead where it takes them, exhausting the information before moving on to another subject. In this way, it is more difficult for a criminal defense attorney to miss something that might help their client’s case. Lauth’s private investigation team is composed of former military and law enforcement personnel who possess a diversified resume of criminal justice knowledge, and regularly conduct independent investigations in tandem with law enforcement.

A criminal defense attorney not only has to vet their defendant and their own witnesses, but also the witnesses of the opposition in order to establish reasonable doubt. The more sophisticated the witness, the more difficult it will be to impeach their testimony. Expert witnesses or law enforcement witnesses against your defendant will be harder to impeach than a witness to the alleged crime.In addition to developing leads, this same skillset allows private investigators to impeach the credibility of the opposition’s key witnesses. Private investigators can review records from a witness’s personal life or enterprise in search of factors that might indicate bias. Private investigators may even be able to use their surveillance skillset to document contradictions or clear bias in a person’s testimony, undercutting their value to the prosecution.

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