Sarah Lavis

But mum was saying to me, you need to do what's right for you.

And she didn't understand about concurrent either.

Like nobody explained to us what the implications would be of taking the plea.

And to have to stand up in front of everybody in court and go through everything in detail.

Why are they cross-examining you?

When they've looked at it, there's so much evidence, so much DNA evidence, physical evidence.

Yeah.

And I'm sure if you asked them the questions, they'd explain it too.

Yeah, but you didn't know them.

No, yeah.

I didn't know what questions to ask.

And I think that's why, because I keep hearing it time and time again, when people are like, I was surprised about concurrent, I was surprised how low the sentencing was.

And I think, oh, you're like me, like going in thinking, oh, this is how the system works.

I think that's what people don't understand why it doesn't make sense.

They don't realize what you get charged with is not what you get sentenced with.

That follows all the way through.

Next time you come up,

they're only looking at what you got sentenced for.

They're not looking at what you got charged with.

Yeah, so they're not looking at the whole picture in the first place because you downgrade it.