Highlight the defendant's positive traits, such as honesty, integrity, hard work, or community involvement. I am writing this letter on behalf of a former student of mine who is presently before you on criminal charges and is due to be sentenced shortly.The goal of character reference letters is to tell the judge a story. To give the judge insight into a defendant as a person. Introduce yourself in the opening paragraph. Character letters are an important tool that you can use at sentencing to convince a judge that a lower sentence may be appropriate. So if you want the letter admitted, the person has to be present in court and able to be called as witness so they can be questioned about it. If your son has an attorney, you will want to give any character reference letter to him for proper submission to the court.
