If Chris repeatedly raped his mom who has dementia then he is probably going to get 50 years in prison. The justice system isn't going to say oh well it's just Barb with dementia: that's no big deal. No, it'll actually make things ten times worse. The only way Chris is going to see the light of day is if he is declared incompetent, he reaches a plea of insanity, or if the police do not have any evidence. Chris is going to die in prison; probably of cardiac arrest at the age of 65.
I could be very wrong if there's some damning evidence that I don't know about, but a lot of this hinges on Barb's cooperation. Barb is old, but the criteria for Chris to be convicted of the really nasty stuff without Barb's assistance is that she was literally physically incapable of refusing consent. i.e. unconscious, so mentally out of it that she was incapable of understanding what was happening, or physically paralyzed such that she couldn't communicate. It's not like with a minor where they're considered automatically unable to understand.
WITH Barb's assistance she can simply say that she was threatened, forced, unconscious, or just plain refused consent, I don't think that's happening if Barb's writing to Chris, also I think the prosecutor would have brought rape charges right away if this were the case.
Being old or even a bit demented doesn't mean the state takes away your right to consent automatically. They have to recognize that you are no longer your own guardian. And doing that wouldn't just make Chris fucking Barb illegal, it would make *anyone* fucking Barb illegal (though with harsher consequences if they were a caretaker, which Chris would've been).
I think that's the main reason we only see the incest charge. That's the one charge where there's no burden to prove lack of consent.
If he's appointed, then he's working as a public defender. CWC didn't hire him.
It's very well known in the legal community that Super Lawyers, the website you just linked to, is a joke. We talk shit about it. I get spam in my inbox from them all the time: you literally pay them a fee and you get to call yourself "Top Rated by Super Lawyers for [years you paid the fee]." I promise you that Heilberg wrote that blurb himself. And he didn't "help write the manual", he "helped edit a manual."
I'm not saying he's a bad attorney, but he's a guy who's taking on public defense cases and moonlighting as a adjunct professor to supplement his income. He's not Johnnie Cochran.
The distinction people make is that he's NOT from a PD's office and thus he has more control over his case load.
Yeah he's not who celebrities or billionaires are going to turn to, but he does seem to have a good track record, a lot of experience, and doesn't have any red flags. Realistically when a mortal millenial being is searching for an attorney you are going to go straight to avvo, and SEO spam is king and Heilberg, while being older and probably not natively internet savvy, saw an opportunity to spend some shekels and buy into something like SL for the extra blurb on avvo. That said, he doesn't seem to get much business that way given the lack of reviews.
Still, he seems to have had a lot of pre-internet-style old-school community activity. All in all he seems to be very respected in central Virginia, if nothing else for his experience. The local media seems to like to go to him a lot for commentary.
I hope they're paying Heillberg well.
They're not. He's not getting anywhere near what a private case would get him. The whole case will get him mid four figures max since there's an eventual cap. Still, at least it's something. Do remember that he's not spending all day working on this, probably just a few hours a week, or a solid day on weeks where something important happens.
EDIT: Full dislosure of edits I made to this because I was half-asleep when I wrote it initially. NOT from a PD office, and SEO not SOR. Although Sex Offender Registry optimization sounds like a burgeoning new industry.