In more than twenty years of practicing law, both as an Assistant District Attorney in New York City and as a defense attorney in Texas, I have found that to successfully practice criminal law, you must evaluate your case as a prosecutor would if you are a defense attorney and evaluate it as a defense attorney would if you are a prosecutor.  The strengths of your case will not help you nearly as much as the weakness of your case can hurt you.

I learned a valuable lesson from a physicist that also applies to the practice of law.  If an asteroid is discovered to be on a collision course with earth, it is far easier and preferable to nudge it off course as early as possible rather than to attempt to destroy it just before it crashes into us.  Likewise, a decision not to arrest or a no bill by a grand jury is infinitely preferrable to a not guilty verdict by a petit jury.