Hiring a defense lawyer isn’t just for people who have committed or been charged with a crime. While an experienced and dedicated defense lawyer can help you fight for your rights if you have committed a crime, there are also plenty of other circumstances where you should consider hiring a defense lawyer. Below are a few examples of how defense lawyers can help you navigate tricky situations.

Whether you destroy a valued possession of a partner in a domestic dispute or deface public property as part of a protest, you could be charged with criminal mischief. Additionally, destroying your own property for insurance money or recklessly causing a substantial interruption to structures like public utilities, health care facilities, or government operations is also considered criminal mischief.

With tensions rising in seemingly every area of life, it’s not a surprise that criminal charges for hate crimes have also increased. According to statistics from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, there were 46 hate crime incidents in Utah in 2020. In 2019 there were only 18. One of the major factors in determining whether a crime is charged as a hate crime is intent. Fighting against accusations based on your intent can be difficult, but the expert criminal defense lawyers at Brown, Bradshaw, and Moffat can help. Below are three questions you may have about hate crimes and the associated charges in Utah.

After you’ve been charged with a crime and hire a lawyer, you will likely have questions about how much it will cost to defend your case. At Brown, Bradshaw & Moffat, we will do everything we can to ensure you receive professional representation at a fair rate. Here are a few common questions you may have about paying for your legal defense and how we handle payments at our office.

If you are the subject of a federal crime investigation, chances are you won’t know until the prosecution has already gathered most of the evidence. You should find an experienced lawyer to defend you quickly, because once federal agents have gathered their evidence, they will try to get a confession out of you. Your best rule of thumb is to use your right to remain silent around any federal officers because they may use what you say at any time as a confession.

No one wants to be remembered by the mistakes they made as a child. In Utah, it is possible to expunge (seal) your juvenile record if you meet certain eligibility requirements. Properly expunging a juvenile record means that your earlier juvenile court proceedings are considered never to have occurred.

If you have been charged with a crime, the last thing you want to do is commit another crime in the process of your criminal procedure. There is a whole world of crimes that can be committed in the process of working with the government through your criminal procedure. Below are only summaries of the Utah code. For the full details of each offense, you can visit the offenses against the administration of government section (76-8-5).

White-collar crime isn’t just insider trading and money laundering. There are a lot more crimes that qualify as white-collar crimes. This is especially important to know in Utah because Utah was the first state in the U.S. to create a public white-collar crime offender registry. It works like a sex-offender registry, where users can view who has been charged and convicted in the past ten (10) years of certain white-collar crimes. Below are 9 crimes that could land you in trouble with the law but also on the white-collar crime registry.

The state of Utah has specific laws around electronic communication harassment. While there are many ways to harass someone with electronic communication, the crime most commonly known is cyberstalking. Since cyberstalking can happen anywhere, it’s important to keep in mind that a person who is guilty of the crime can be subject to prosecution in the jurisdiction where the communication originated or was received. Here are four things you should know about cyberstalking and the potential consequences associated with the crime in Utah.