San Diego Violent Crimes Lawyer

California reserves its harshest punishments for crimes of violence. A violent-felony conviction can mean years or decades in state prison, a permanent strike on your record, and sentencing enhancements that dwarf the penalty for the underlying charge. Prosecutors in San Diego County pursue these cases aggressively, and the consequences follow you long after any sentence is served — into employment, housing, professional licensing, immigration status, and your right to own a firearm.

If you or a loved one is facing a violent-crime accusation, the time to act is now — before charges are formally filed and before the prosecution's version of events hardens into the official story.

At Law Office of Marc S. Kohnen, we defend the full range of violent-crime cases in San Diego's state and federal courts. From everyday San Diegans to high-profile clients, people facing the most serious accusations place their trust in Marc Kohnen's experience and judgment.

What Counts as a Violent Crime in California?

In everyday language, a violent crime is any offense involving force, the threat of force, or physical injury to another person. In California law, the term has a more precise and more consequential meaning: certain felonies are designated "violent" or "serious" by statute, and those labels control how much time a person actually serves, whether a conviction counts as a strike, and how much leverage the prosecution holds in negotiations.

The violent-crime umbrella covers a wide range of accusations — murder and manslaughter, assault and battery, domestic violence, robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, criminal threats, mayhem, and more. Several of these areas have their own dedicated pages on this site: assault and battery, domestic violence, homicide, and weapons offenses. This page covers the broader violent-crime landscape — the charges themselves, the strike and enhancement rules that drive sentencing, and the defense strategies that cut across these cases.

Whatever the specific charge, one thing is constant: these cases are won or lost on preparation, and preparation has to start immediately.

Violent-Crime Charges We Defend

Beyond the assault, domestic violence, homicide, and weapons cases covered elsewhere on this site, Marc defends the full spectrum of violent-felony accusations filed in San Diego County, including:

• Criminal threats (Penal Code 422) — willfully threatening to kill or seriously injure someone, where the threat is specific, communicated, and causes sustained fear. This is a wobbler: charged as a misdemeanor or a felony. As a felony, it is a strike.
• Kidnapping (Penal Code 207 and 209) — moving another person a substantial distance by force or fear. Aggravated forms — such as kidnapping for ransom or to commit robbery under PC 209, or kidnapping during a carjacking under PC 209.5 — carry the possibility of life sentences.
• False imprisonment (Penal Code 236 and 237) — unlawfully restraining or confining someone against their will. Often charged alongside domestic violence or kidnapping counts, it becomes a felony when accomplished by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit.
• Mayhem (Penal Code 203) — unlawfully and maliciously disfiguring or disabling another person, frequently charged after fights where an injury turns out to be permanent.
• Carjacking (Penal Code 215) — taking a vehicle from someone's person or immediate presence by force or fear. Carjacking carries substantial state-prison exposure and is a strike offense.
• Robbery (Penal Code 211) — taking property from a person's immediate presence by force or fear. The use of force or intimidation is what separates robbery from theft and makes it a violent felony.
• Elder abuse involving force (Penal Code 368) — physical abuse or willful infliction of unjustifiable pain on a person 65 or older, with sharply higher exposure when charged as a felony with injury allegations.
• Witness intimidation (Penal Code 136.1) — dissuading or attempting to dissuade a witness or victim from reporting a crime or testifying. Prosecutors add this charge readily, sometimes based on nothing more than a phone call from jail.

Strikes: Serious and Violent Felonies Under the Three Strikes Law

Much of what makes a violent-crime case so dangerous is not the base sentence for the charge — it is California's strike system. The Penal Code maintains two overlapping lists: "serious" felonies under Penal Code 1192.7(c) and "violent" felonies under Penal Code 667.5(c). Robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, mayhem, and felony criminal threats all appear on at least one of these lists, along with murder, many assault variants, and other offenses.

A conviction for a serious or violent felony is a strike under the Three Strikes law. If you are later charged with any new felony and have one prior strike, the sentence on the new case is generally doubled. A person with two or more prior strikes who is convicted of a new serious or violent felony can face 25 years to life. How these rules apply depends on the charges, the priors, and the facts, but the general point is stark: a single violent-felony conviction today can multiply the consequences of anything that happens for the rest of your life.

Strikes also change how time is served. Most California prisoners can reduce their sentences substantially through custody credits, but a person convicted of a violent felony listed in PC 667.5(c) is generally limited to about 15 percent credit — meaning roughly 85 percent of the sentence is actually served. The difference between a charge that carries the violent-felony label and one that does not can amount to years of real time, which is why so much of the defense fight happens over how a case is charged, not just whether it can be won at trial.

Sentencing Enhancements That Drive the Real Exposure

In violent-felony cases, the enhancements the District Attorney attaches to the complaint often matter more than the underlying charge. Three families of enhancements dominate:

Great bodily injury. Penal Code 12022.7 adds prison time — typically three additional years, more in certain circumstances — when the defendant personally inflicts great bodily injury during a felony. A GBI finding can also convert a felony into a strike and trigger the 85 percent credit limitation.

Firearm use. Penal Code 12022.5 adds years for personally using a firearm in a felony, and Penal Code 12022.53 — often summarized as the "use a gun and you're done" law — imposes far longer enhancements for specified serious felonies: additional decades of exposure when a gun is used, discharged, or discharges causing great bodily injury or death. Courts now have some discretion to strike or reduce firearm enhancements in appropriate cases, and whether that discretion gets exercised depends heavily on the record the defense builds.

Gang allegations. Penal Code 186.22 adds substantial time when a felony is committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a criminal street gang. Assembly Bill 333, effective in 2022, significantly narrowed this enhancement — tightening what the prosecution must prove, requiring that the benefit to the gang be more than reputational, and allowing the defense to have gang allegations tried separately from the underlying charge. Gang enhancements that would have survived a decade ago are now vulnerable, and challenging them is a core part of defending many San Diego violent-crime cases.

Because enhancements are pleaded and proved separately, they can be fought separately — through motions, negotiation, and trial. Stripping an enhancement can transform a case, sometimes reducing exposure by more than the base charge itself carries.

Romero Motions: Asking the Court to Strike a Prior

For clients who already have a strike on their record, a Romero motion asks the trial judge to dismiss a prior strike allegation in the interest of justice under Penal Code 1385. The court looks at the nature of the current offense, the age and circumstances of the prior, and the person's background, character, and prospects. A granted Romero motion can be the difference between a doubled sentence — or a life term — and a sentence proportionate to the current case. These motions are discretionary and fact-intensive, which means the presentation matters: a thorough, humanizing, well-documented motion gives the court a real basis to exercise its discretion.

Defenses in Violent-Crime Cases

Self-defense and defense of others run through nearly every category of violent-crime charge. California law permits a person to use reasonable force when they reasonably believe they or someone else faces imminent harm. Many prosecutions labeled assault, criminal threats, or worse begin as mutual confrontations in which our client was defending himself or herself — and the police simply arrested the person left standing. Establishing self-defense means reconstructing the encounter: who initiated it, what our client actually perceived, and whether the response was proportionate.

Heat of passion and sudden provocation matter, too. In homicide cases they can reduce murder to voluntary manslaughter, and in other violent-crime contexts, evidence of provocation shapes charging decisions, negotiations, and sentencing.

Beyond justification defenses, violent-crime cases turn on the same weaknesses as any prosecution: mistaken identification by stressed eyewitnesses, exaggerated or shifting accounts from complaining witnesses, injuries inconsistent with the story told, missing or ambiguous video, and statements taken in violation of our clients' rights. In criminal-threats cases, the words actually said and their context are everything; in kidnapping and false-imprisonment cases, consent and the distance and purpose of any movement often decide the case. Each charge has elements the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and each element is a place the case can fail.

Why Violent-Felony Allegations Demand Immediate Investigation

Violent-crime prosecutions are built on perishable evidence. Surveillance systems at bars, gas stations, and apartment complexes overwrite their footage on cycles measured in days or weeks. Bystanders who saw what really happened scatter and become hard to find. Bruises heal, memories consolidate around whichever version was repeated first, and 911 recordings and body-camera footage sit unrequested. The police investigation is designed to support an arrest that has already been made — not to find the evidence that helps you.

That is why the defense investigation cannot wait for the first court date. When Marc takes on a violent-crime case, the early work includes preservation demands for video and electronic evidence, locating and interviewing witnesses while memories are fresh, photographing injuries and scenes, and, where the facts call for it, bringing in investigators and forensic consultants. In some cases, presenting this evidence to the District Attorney before the filing decision persuades the office to file reduced charges or none at all. That window closes fast, and it never reopens.

Bail, Custody, and Protective Orders in San Diego

Violent-felony charges change the arithmetic of pretrial release. Bail amounts under the San Diego County bail schedule are substantially higher for violent and serious felonies, and prosecutors frequently ask courts to go above the schedule or to deny release outright in the most serious cases. An effective bail argument is not a formality — it requires concrete evidence of community ties, employment, family support, and a release plan that answers the prosecution's safety arguments. Whether a client fights the case from home or from jail affects everything that follows.

Most violent-crime cases also come with a criminal protective order restricting contact with the alleged victim. When the complaining witness is a spouse, partner, or family member, that order can force a client out of their own home. Violating a protective order — even at the invitation of the protected person — is a new crime and a self-inflicted wound in the underlying case. We counsel every client on exactly what the order permits, and where the facts support it, we ask the court to modify orders so families can maintain lawful contact while the case is pending.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is every violent-crime charge a strike?

No. Only felonies listed as serious under Penal Code 1192.7(c) or violent under Penal Code 667.5(c) count as strikes, and some charges in this area — including certain wobblers reduced to misdemeanors — carry no strike at all. Because the strike label controls sentencing on this case and every future one, a central goal of the defense is often moving the case off the strike lists entirely: a reduction from robbery to grand theft, or from felony criminal threats to a misdemeanor, changes far more than the name of the conviction.

The alleged victim wants to drop the charges. Will the case go away?

Not automatically. The District Attorney — not the alleged victim — decides whether to prosecute, and San Diego prosecutors routinely proceed even when a complaining witness recants or asks for dismissal. A cooperative witness still matters: their account, credibility, and wishes influence charging and negotiation. But be careful — contacting a witness about their testimony can be charged as witness intimidation under Penal Code 136.1. Any communication should go through counsel.

Can a felony violent-crime charge be reduced to a misdemeanor?

Sometimes. Several charges in this area, including criminal threats, are wobblers that can be charged or later reduced as misdemeanors, depending on the facts and the client's history — and false imprisonment is a felony only when the prosecution can prove it was effected by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit. Others, such as robbery and carjacking, are straight felonies — but even then, the realistic negotiating question is often whether the case can resolve to a related non-strike offense. Early defense work, before the filing decision is made, gives you the strongest chance at the lower charge.

What should I do if police want to question me about a violent incident?

Politely decline to answer questions and ask for a lawyer. People facing violent-crime allegations often believe they can explain the situation away — that once the detective hears their side, the case will end. What actually happens is that their words get matched against the physical evidence and other statements, and any inconsistency becomes the centerpiece of the prosecution. You have an absolute right to remain silent and to counsel. Use both.

Talk to a San Diego Violent Crimes Attorney Today

The stakes in a violent-felony case — strikes, enhancements, 85 percent time, protective orders — are too high to face with a wait-and-see approach. Marc Kohnen offers a free, confidential initial consultation, and he uses it to start building the defense immediately: identifying the evidence that needs to be preserved, the witnesses who need to be found, and the arguments that need to be in front of the prosecutor before the case takes its final shape.

If you or someone you love is under investigation for or charged with a violent crime in San Diego, contact Law Office of Marc S. Kohnen today.