In: Root » Legal and finance » Investigation
When you are charged with a criminal offense the first thing you will find out about is the court date. If you want your case heard now and you do not think it will damage your case, then you could request a speedy trial. Some states will let you request the speedy trial and some will not. The reason your request could be denied is because the prosecutor wants time to get all the evidence in place. If you get the motion granted then remember you can not come back later in the trial and say you were not ready. When you go to court your trial could be a bench trial or a jury trial. A bench trial means the judge will decide the law and the facts and what should happen. In a jury trial your case is heard by the jury and they decide the facts and hand down their verdict. Depending upon the charges you might consider a jury trial. If you get a jury trial then the jurors are picked for the trial by the judge, attorneys or both. There are questions the jurors will be asked in order to make sure they can just stick to the facts and not be bias. A jury can be removed from a case without an explanation or a reason. When your trial starts the jurors will be told you are innocence until proven guilty. The jurors have to keep the presumption your innocent until they hear all the evidence and then they go deliberate. Each lawyer will now proceed with their opening statements. If there are any witnesses that seen anything to do with the crime they will now start appearing in court. They will have to take the stand and testify to what they seen. You, the defendant, cannot testify against yourself. If you want to take the stand you can do so in order to testify in your own defense. After all the witnesses have taken the stand and all the evidence has been submitted the lawyers will preset closing arguments. After the conclusion of the closing arguments the jurors leave the courtroom and start deliberations. The jurors deliberate and come back with a final decision. They will decide if you are guilty or not guilty. Sometimes there is a hung jury and this means they are tied on the guilty and not guilty outcome. Where there is a hung jury the judge will dismiss all the jurors. When this happens, now it is up to the prosecutor if they want a new trial or if they want to drop the charges. All of this will be on your arrest records for anyone to see. Even if the charges are dismissed it will still be on your record. If you do not want anything to show to people then you might think about getting the records expunged. A criminal records search will pull your records in a few seconds for everyone. Then they can see the life of crime you have chosen to live. Unfortunately this lifestyle can get you denied credit and even friends.
|
|||||||||||||
Disclaimer
1) E-articles is not responsible for the information contained by this article as well for any and all copyright infringements by authors and writers. E-articles is a free information resource. If you suspect this article for any copyright infringement, please read the terms of service and contact us or use the "Report this article" button on this page to investigate the problem.
2) E-articles is not responsible for inaccuracies, falsehoods, or any other types of misinformation this article may contain and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by a user through the user's reliance on the information gained here. |
|||||||||||||
