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If you change the barbecue sauce just slightly, Monroe almost tastes the same as Conroe. Both are small, predominantly white, southern towns with similar values, having cast 65 and 80 percent of their votes, respectively, for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. Monroe is about 25 miles from Charlotte, Conroe about 40 miles from Houston, where Hardin has worked for decades.
In small towns like these, Hardin says people grow up with a broader mix of people than they might in bigger cities, where people cluster in neighborhoods and schools of the same economic class.
That makes it easy for him to connect because he feels like he knows them.
In small towns, "you grow up generally in a less privileged environment, around average people, and that's who one day is on your jury," Hardin said. "I told people if I had any advantage in what I've done, is that I'm an average person. There are eons of lawyers brighter than me. I think one thing that has helped me is that because I am an average person of no more than average intelligence or ability, I think I hear things the way the average person does."
Prosecutors know what they will face if the case goes to trial. Hardin describes himself as "an incredible admirer of juries," which is almost an understatement. Before he entered private practice in 1991, he worked on the other side of the aisle as a Houston prosecutor. He did not lose a felony jury trial in more than 100 tries, including 14 death-penalty cases.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nfl/2014/11/03/adrian-peterson-felony-child-abuse-charge-rusty-hardin/18424029/
If information is accurate it appears his attorney is talented at connecting to red county juries and a decent chance of winning the case in areas where corporal punishment is supported even though the evidence points to violation of the law.
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Humans are emotional creatures. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys do their utmost to leverage this fact in their trial strategies. Unfortunately, this turns the courtroom from a place of facts, logic and reason into ‘theater.’ The attorneys are playing to a human audience, and they do whatever they can to engender strong feelings on the part of the jury – hate, disgust, bias, support, or sympathy. The trial becomes not about facts and logic, but about emotion and feelings. I’m familiar with one trial in which the prosecutor stated to the jury that the defense’s expert witnesses were nothing but “whores,” and were only testifying for the money. So, I suppose the prosecution’s expert witnesses were testifying pro bono – right?
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2013/02/20/why-i-think-the-us-justice-system-is-broken-and-why-its-not-getting-fixed/
Plea bargaining is similar to any time of bargaining situation in there is the bargaining power they feel the have which varies from the actual bargaining power they actually have while estimating the other parties' true bargaining power. Prosecutor could have overestimated the defendant's attorney bargaining power in this situation.
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