So the first one, obviously you should be aware of, that’s the not guilty plea. When you show up for your initial appearance arraignment, I mean, it’s so commonplace that you usually don’t even have to say it. The judge is just going to give you a plea of not guilty and gets you to the next court date because that’s the standard thing to do to start the case and start working to see if an agreement can be reached with the prosecutor if it needs to go to trial. But that is if you do need to say it, you enter a plea of not guilty, you get to the next stage. All right. The next type of plea is usually part of a plea agreement. It’s a no contest plea or a nolo contendere. And what that means is that you are not admitting guilt, but you’re acknowledging that there’s sufficient evidence for you to be found guilty and that you’re essentially requesting that the court find you guilty in order to enter a plea agreement or to enter a blind plea. So that’s nolo contendere or no contest.

You see people enter not guilty, guilty, all of those types of things. But a blind plea is really a type of resolution to your case. So you can get a plea deal worked out with the state or the prosecutor and enter that as a plea deal. You can go to trial, either a bench trial or a jury trial, where the evidence is put on and force the state to either meet their burden or you be acquitted, or there’s middle ground. Let’s say you’ve got a case that you’re not real comfortable going before a jury because there’s a lot of risk in going to a jury. Nobody ever knows exactly for sure what a jury is going to do.

So when we’re talking about a concurrent sentence, or CC, and a consecutive sentence, CS, we’re talking about somebody who has multiple counts or multiple cases that are being essentially pled or sentenced together. And then once that happens, you might have a case with five different counts, might be entering a plea on all of them or found guilty on all of them. Each of those counts can have a separate sentence. So the question becomes are you serving them at the same time or do you have to finish the sentence on one before you get to the other? And if it’s concurrent, that means that you’re serving it at the same time. So if you’ve got a one year sentence on all of them, once you complete the one year on one of them, you’ve completed on all of them.

All right, so first I said, “application to revoke,” and then I said, “motion to revoke”. Why am I changing it up? Well, that’s because it gets changed up out there. Some counties call them application to revoke; other prosecutors like to file them as motions to revoke. Either way, they’re the same thing, though. That’s where we’re dealing with somebody who’s on probation that got a suspended sentence. Meaning, they were found guilty, but they weren’t thrown in jail. Instead, the judge said, “Pursuant to a plea agreement…” or pursuant to the judge’s ruling, that they got to serve their time outside on probation, where there’s various things they have to complete, and they have to stay out of trouble.

Sometimes we file motions for deficits in the case, maybe they’re speedy trial violations, we get them dismissed that way, then it’s up to the judge whether our motions are granted. So those are ways that are up to the DA, whether they’ll dismiss, whether it’s up to the judge, whether they’ll order dismissal, based on legal grounds that we come up with in our motions. And then there’s the three that are up to the defendant. And the first one of those is plea deal. The defendant always has the option of accepting a plea deal, or not accepting a plea deal. Your attorney’s going to negotiate with the state show the strengths of the defense’s case, the weaknesses in the state’s case, and use as much leverage in mitigation we have to get the best possible plea offer.

DOC, we’re talking about jail time or we’re talking about jail time in the penitentiary. If the sentence is over a year, then you’re looking at doing penitentiary time. If it’s under a year on a misdemeanor, it could be county time. But, that usually comes up either pursuant to a plea deal in order to avoid a larger sentence. Sometimes a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. It’s a blind plea and you get sentenced by the judge, without a plea agreement from the state for jail time or you go to jury trial and the default on jury trial when the jury recommends punishment and says 10 years, you don’t really get the option for 10 years deferred, 10 years to spend in the jail. When the jury says 10 years, it means 10 years in, which is 10 years DOC time. That’s the way that that works. As far as DOC time.

When you’re on a deferred sentence and the prosecutor is alleging that you violated your probation, they file an application to accelerate alleging that. And then once they file an application to accelerate, they have an affidavit that goes with it and that goes to the judge to sign an arrest warrant just like a brand new case. You get an arrest warrant out and then you’re arrested on that. You come before the court, you’re entitled to a hearing fairly quick on those, but you can waive that if you want additional time to prepare. And you want to find out what exactly they’re alleging, that’ll be in the application and then negotiate something out.

A split sentence is a combination between a suspended sentence and a DOC sentence or a jail time sentence. So you might have a 7/3 split, and that would be where you’re going to serve seven years in and then you get three years probation. Or, a 5/5 split or whatever the case may be. Sometimes if you’re doing just a little bit of jail time, what they may say in the sentencing is you’ve got a “five years all suspended but the first 30 days”, and then you do 30 days in and the rest is suspended.

So it’s similar in some respects to the deferred because you’re on probation for a period of time and you stay out of jail. But the main difference is with the suspended sentence, you get a conviction. So you work out a plea deal with the state, or maybe you do a blind plea and it gets sentenced by the judge. Either case, if you get a suspended sentence, from that moment that you’re sentenced, you are guilty of that offense and you have it on your record. So, if it’s a misdemeanor, you’ve got a misdemeanor conviction. If it’s a felony, now you’re a convicted felon if you weren’t before.

A deferred sentence is where you’re on probation for a period of time and then it’s dismissed and expunged. A continued sentence is a little bit different. So in a continued sentence, you’ve reached an agreement with the prosecutor and pursuant to that deal, you enter a plea and then you’re put on probation for a period of time.

So there’s usually two ways about a deferred prosecution agreement that it gets worked out. Sometimes it happens before a criminal case is filed. So there’s an investigation going on and there’s negotiations going on with the prosecutor. This happens a lot of times with bogus checks. So if a bogus check gets turned into the DA’s office, a lot of times they’ll contact the person and they workout a payment plan on it.