[sugacooky]

My son is on probation, setting in jail for violation(non payment) court date haven't been set for the theft by taken charge; I don't know what to do shall I let him go in with a public defender again or get a lawyer. Money is vry tight only one person working in our house.

[smoothy]

Paid for lawyer will be better IF you can afford it. Otherwise you have no choice. Public defenders tend to be overworked with a LOT of cases.

However the public defender thing isn't a choice if the court determines you have the ability to pay. And around here, they do check to see if you are eligible before they will assign one.

[Fr_Chuck]

Next has the PO been notified of the new charges ?

I may slightly disagree, there are some really great public defenders, and many paid attorneys may or may not be able to do much, a lot of this depends on the evidence, I mean if he robbed a priest in front of 10 nuns as witnesses while on TV. Ok not much of a chance of getting him off.
** OK over done that example a bit, but you get the idea.

So one has to look at how much evidence they have, if they have him fairly dead to right, or he has already confessed, often a public defender can work out great plea deals. Also how much was "taken" if he took a 10 dollar item, or was it a 10,000 dollar item, that makes a big difference also.

An attorney may well need 3000 to 5000 cash just to start a case and could well be 10,000 plus if there is a lot of work to it.