— When a person is arrested and eventually charged with a crime, the district attorney’s office’s goal is to secure a conviction.

But how prosecutors arrive at that conviction can vary.

For a variety of reasons, Muskogee County District Attorney Larry Moore said, sometimes it’s not beneficial to take a case to jury trial.

Sometimes, Moore said, a key witness doesn’t want to testify. Other times — such as rape or molestation cases — it may be too painful for a witness to relive the experience in front of the person charged with the crime.

“There’s a lot that goes into the process of progressing a case that the public may not be aware of,” Moore said. “We’re trying to find a way to get justice for a victim, punish the offender, and protect the public. Sometimes balancing all those can be quite a task.”

In McIntosh County, a Checotah school teacher was charged with multiple counts of having sex with students.   

That teacher, Michelle McCutchan, entered a blind plea before a judge — essentially giving the judge the ability to set her sentence in lieu of taking it to a jury — and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

However, multiple rape counts against McCutchan were dropped as the case progressed. Prosecutors said it was to prevent the teenagers she pleaded guilty to having sex with from having to testify.

“We don’t want to embarrass those kids,” District 25 Assistant District Attorney Crieg Rittenhouse said in July when McCutchan pleaded.

So prosecutors dropped some of the charges as part of a plea bargain allowing McCutchan to plead guilty to fewer counts. In return, prosecutors got what they wanted — a conviction.

Plea bargains upset the public occasionally, Moore said. The term “plea bargain” conjures up images of guilty people escaping prosecution.

That’s not the case, Moore said. Many times a plea bargain ensures a punishment for someone who may wind up with an acquittal should the case go to a jury trial.

“There are all types of reasons for that,” Moore said. “There might be evidence, really damning evidence against the defendant, that may not be admissible in front of a jury. There’s always evidence in every case that a jury won’t get to hear.

“In that case, we have to weigh our options. If the defendant will plead guilty to a plea negotiation, that’s better than seeing him walk out the door with an acquittal because we couldn’t present some evidence to a jury.”

Further, Moore said, expecting every person charged with a crime to see their case progress to a jury trial is just not realistic.

Court records show 94 people charged with felonies in Muskogee County during the month of August. In 2011, 1,085 people were charged with felonies. And Moore said between 1,000 and 1,500 misdemeanors are charged each year.

The rub, Moore said, is that cases ending in front of a jury represent such a small amount of the overall workload.

“Our weekly docket is anywhere from 100 to 300 people,” Moore said. “That includes preliminary hearings, sounding dockets and DCAs (district court arraignments.) We’ve had days where we’ve had 115 cases in a single day.”

Three times a year, the Muskogee County Courthouse hosts hundreds of people charged with crimes who listen as prosecutors and defense attorneys tell judges whether or not they’re prepared to present their cases to a jury.

About a month later, the jury trial lineup is finalized — from hundreds of potential cases down to more like 50 to 60 — and juries begin to hear cases.

“But we generally only can do something like five or six of those cases during each trial period,” Moore said.

The problem is simple mathematics. There are six prosecutors in the Muskogee County District Attorney’s Office. There are three judges — District Judges Mike Norman and Tom Alford, and Associate District Judge Norman Thygesen — who preside over trials.

Each of the three trial periods last just two weeks — or six total weeks out of the year. In the past, Moore said, Muskogee County had three three-week trial periods. In 2013, the county will return to the nine weeks of trials.

“I know it was cut to six weeks because of budget issues, and that took three weeks away from us to try cases,” Moore said.

Some cases can last the entire two-week trial period. During July’s run of trials, the trial of Dondray Fowler, who was found guilty of murder in the 2010 Arrowhead Mall shooting, encompassed the entire two weeks in Thygesen’s courtroom.

Fowler’s trial was a high-profile case, so Moore and Fowler’s defense attorneys selected jury members from a pool of more than 60.  

That selection process took several days. Between jury selection, opening statements, witnesses and cross examination, and closing arguments, one of the three judges was tied up the entire time with that one case.

That left just two judges to try other cases.  

“Mathematically, it’s just not possible to push every case to trial,” Moore said. Every defendant has a right to demand a trial, but if we took every case to a jury ... the system is already at a crawl. If everyone demanded a trial, it would completely stall.”

District 27 District Attorney Brian Kuester faces the same issue Moore does. Kuester is the DA over Cherokee, Wagoner, Sequoyah and Adair counties.

“The system is set up in such a way that plea bargaining is a mandatory part of the system,” Kuester said. “If every case we see went to trial, chances are we’d be trying 2012 cases in 2032.”

Muskogee attorney Bob Locke said he recommends the vast majority of his clients take the courtroom process all the way through a preliminary hearing.

During a preliminary hearing, the DA’s office presents their evidence to a judge, who determines if the defendant should stand trial.

“I very seldom ever waive a preliminary hearing,” Locke said. “You get a chance to see what the DA’s case is like, and you can determine if their case is as strong as maybe they think it is.”

If the defendant is bound over for trial, Locke said, attorneys begin to think about technical defenses — ways for motions and appeals to be filed.

Those technical defenses present the DA’s office with another motivation to at times seek a plea agreement.  

“During a trial, there are sometimes things that happen that allow the defense to appeal a verdict,” Moore said. “Maybe the jury heard something they weren’t supposed to, or a prosecutor said something they weren’t supposed to. And later on the defense attorney appeals the verdict.”

But, Moore said, if a defendant agrees to a plea deal and pleads guilty in front of a judge, that appeals process never gets off the ground.

“At that point, they can’t appeal the decision,” Moore said. “They have to take what the judge gives them. That saves valuable time and money. For the victim, that’s swift justice, and there’s nothing to appeal on. It’s very beneficial.”

Kuester said the appeals process plays a large role in how prosecutors approach a case.

“Another factor we look at is, is it better to get 40 years on a plea deal with no appeal rights,” Kuester said. “Or you go through a trial and you get a conviction, but you’re dealing with the potential for appeals and a retrial three or four years down the road.”

Reach Dylan Goforth at (918) 684-2903 or dgoforth

@muskogeephoenix.com.