AREAS OF PRACTICE

Arson is a serious crime and is a serious allegation to have hurled at you.

Arson can be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor, depending on the facts of case. That means punishments for arson can include fines, restitution, probation, forced psychological treatment, or days, weeks, and years of sitting in a jail cell.

All cases are different. BUT(!) our experience has taught us that law enforcement and government fire investigators ALWAYS treat these cases with intense scrutiny.

Prosecutors and judges and social scientists frequently buy into the theory that Arson can be indicative of more underlying sinister behavior or future practices such as violence or sex crimes.

If you are asked about, accused of, charged with, or under investigation for Arson, you need to act fast and call a lawyer. DO NOT under any circumstances speak with firemen, fire inspectors, insurance investigators, or police if asked to do so without first speaking with a lawyer. Otherwise, you are the one who is likely to get burned.

Here’s why. Arson can be treated as a crime of violence, fraud, theft, or some other creative prosecutorial theory. If you are accused of burning (or attempting to burn) down a structure, lots of people have an interest in trying to smoke you. First, the police and prosecutors will want to arrest you and throw you in jail. The fire inspector and insurance investigator will want to deprive you of any coverage for fire damage for which you may not have been responsible. Property owners (including banks or mortgage companies) may not only want to see you locked up, but will most likely want to sue you for lots of money cover the fire damage for which you are blamed.

If you need to fight an arson accusation, you will need a lawyer. Your lawyer will most likely need to hire a private arson expert to work on your behalf. An arson expert can help your lawyer to disprove the prosecutor’s case against you; can second guess and disprove the fire inspector’s conclusions; and most importantly can write a report that may get your case dismissed, dropped, won at trial, or dropped down to a lesser crime or smaller punishment during plea negotiations.

Don’t get burned by trying to handle an arson case alone. Call us at OSBORNE LAW and let us help you to pour some water on law enforcement’s efforts to smoke you.

Some people say that Prostitution is a victimless crime and that Prostitution should be legalized and regulated. Other people say that Prostitution is a crime that enslaves vulnerable women/men/transgender folks, compromises public health, and besmirches the dignity of a community.

There are interesting articles and websites dedicated to this debate that you may consider reading when you have a free moment.

At OSBORNE LAW, we are not interested in having that debate. We are interested in keeping you out of jail and conviction free should you find yourself charged with Prostitution – related activity (giving or receiving).

Prostitution arrests are frequently publicized and plastered all over local papers and webpages. Especially if the Accused is an adult male seeking the sexual contact. For some reason police departments get a real hoot out of publicly humiliating Prostitution arrestees long prior to their first day in court.

As you already know, a Prostitution conviction (or even mere allegation) can destroy your marriage, relationship, career, and reputation. Prostitution allegations are not to be taken lightly. The good news is that these cases are harder for the State to prove than you might think given the way the law is written in New Hampshire, so all hope is NOT LOST.

At OSBORNE LAW, we take Prostitution cases seriously. We are here to help you, not judge you. At OSBORNE LAW we do not believe that a Prostitution arrest makes you a creep, a pedophile, or an otherwise person of loose morals or ill-repute.

We do believe, however, that you should not try to handle Prostitution allegations on your own without the assistance of legal counsel. At OSBORNE LAW, we are discreet, confidential, and non-judgmental.

Don’t be shy and don’t let the State shame you into a guilty plea without first talking to an attorney and learning what your options are. So give us a call and lets see what we can do to help you out of this situation before it is too late.

What exactly is PROWLING? The best answer to that question is you know it when you see it. Police Officers also share that way of thinking. At OSBORNE LAW we think of PROWLING as a crime that falls somewhere between CRIMINAL TRESPASS and BURGLARY.

If you read the law on PROWLING, it clearly defines PROWLING as:

So, if you are walking across someone’s lawn without permission or you are just hanging out in the local convenient store’s parking lot after closing time, you are most likely committing CRIMINAL TRESSPASS.

If you are breaking into the home on which the lawn sits, or you are crawling through the window of the convenient store, you are committing BURGLARY.

If you are not breaking into the home or convenient store, but you are dressed in black, looking in the windows, and running into the bushes whenever a car drives by, you are likely committing PROWLING. As you can see, PROWLING is behavior that falls somewhere past TRESPASS but a few steps short of BURGLARY.

Of course, we can probably imagine other circumstances when you could be charged with PROLWING, without it necessarily having to be dark or late at night.

For example, if one day you are seen hanging around an elementary school playground, in broad daylight, with a burlap sac and duct tape during recess, that behavior could also reasonably fall within the definition of “circumstances that warrant alarm for the safety of persons . . . in the vicinity.” Although at that instance, a charge of PROWLING would be the least of your worries.

At OSBORNE LAW, we won’t run or hide or cause you alarm when you call. We are happy to assist you and guide you through any tough times you are having wherein an accusation of PROWLING has been hurled your way.

In New Hampshire courts, the terms SHOPLIFTING and WILLFUL CONCEALMENT are typically used interchangeably. While we do not believe that technically they are the same crime, the consequences and manner by which they are handled in court are not very different.

The difference between SHOPLIFTING and WILLFUL CONCEALMENT is whether you make it out of the store with the concealed goods. If you make it out of the store with the concealed goods, you will be said to have SHOPLIFTED the goods. If you almost make it to the door, but you are stopped by security before you can leave the building, you will be charged with WILLFUL CONCEALMENT. In a way, WILLFUL CONCEALMENT is like an attempted SHOPLIFTING.

Judges and prosecutors in large retail areas are almost always in agreement that SHOPLIFTING and WILFUL CONCEALMENT are terrible crimes and need to be punished with high fines and perhaps the threat of jail for repeat offenders. Prosecutors and judges in smaller, non-large retail (no big box stores) are not always as harsh – although they still frown on the behavior and will still punish you depending on the value, the amount of items taken, the reason for the act, and your prior criminal record.

What is most important for you to understand is that whether it is a single candy bar or a ton of clothes (bathing suits and thongs seem to be a favorite for some reason), theft, SHOLIFTING and/or WILLFUL CONCEALMENT is usually charged as a MISDEMEANOR (i.e. a criminal offense) of which once convicted, gives you a criminal record.

A SHOLPFTING and/or WILFULL CONCEALMENT arrest or conviction can ruin your reputation, destroy job opportunities, adversely affect education applications, and a whole other slew of consequences that may be unique and specific to any given person.

At OSBORNE LAW, we have found that SHOPLIFTING and WILFULL CONCEALMENT behavior is usually not about greed or a desire to steal. Rather, it is one way by which people act out or seek attention when they are undergoing an enormous amount of stress or neglect in their lives. We have seen these acts committed by educated people, rich people, elderly people, grandparents, legal immigrants with green cards and wonderful families, neglected house wifes, stressed out husbands, and on and on. For these reasons, Attorney Mark Osborne understands that anyone, under the wrong circumstances, can find themselves engaging in SHOPLIFTING and WILLFUL CONCELAMENT. We recommend mental health counseling instead of jail. We seek community service instead of high fines and public humiliation.

At OSBORNE LAW, we won’t conceal the realities of the criminal justice system from you, nor will we steal from you your hopes and dreams of a swift, favorable, and fair resolution so that you can get on with your life. We don’t judge, we help. Period.