Video FAQs on San Antonio, TX Criminal Defense

Gary Churak, San Antonio Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer answers your question. Click play.

Click Play on the video to see the answer.

San Antonio Dismissal Lawyer

You will get a court date. Once again, it depends on the amount that you’re charged with is where you’ll be. You could be in municipal or JP court, you could be in county court, or you could be in district court charged with a felony. You will have usually a number of court dates. The first court date would be your arraignment. That’s where you’d come in and enter your plea of guilty or not guilty. You could have some pretrial dates and eventually a trial date. You can decide to take the case to trial. Often on shoplifting cases, we set those for trial because a lot of the stores just simply do not send their people down, spend all day in court to testify in shoplifting cases. They’re more valuable working in the store than they are in the courtroom. As a matter of course, they basically don’t send a witness down to testify. After a couple of times, you make a speedy trial motion and if you’re lucky, your case gets dismissed. Once again, if the case is dismissed, you are eligible for an expunction to seal the case from your criminal record.

Click Play on the video to see the answer.

The difference between a misdemeanor and a felony is the severity of the criminal offense. Misdemeanors start at the lowest level, such as class C misdemeanor, which would be a traffic ticket or a minor possession of alcohol, an offense which is punishable by fine only. Then you have class B and A misdemeanors, in which the penalty is jail time in the county jail and fines. Felony charges are more serious. In a felony conviction, you can potentially be sent to the Texas Department of Corrections prison. There are multiple grades of felonies. The lowest is state jail felony with a maximum of 2 years in the state jail. There is a third-degree felony, which carries a sentence of 2 to 10 years in the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) prison and a second-degree felony, which can be 2 to 10 in prison. A first-degree felony can entail a sentence of 5 to 99 years to life. In addition, you have a capital felony or capital offense, which carries a life sentence or the death penalty.

San Antonio Drug Case Defense Lawyer

Click Play on the video to see the answer.

Best Criminal Defense Attorney In Texas

Click Play on the video to see the answer.

Under Texas law an indictment is the formal criminal charge of felony against a defendant. What happens is a grand jury, which is comprised of a group of citizens, will convene and hear a brief presentation by the district attorney, and the district attorney will ask for a true-bill of indictment. An indictment doesn’t mean you’re guilty. Basically what it means is that there is probable cause, there is a possibility this criminal case happened, and it should be moved to the court system. When someone is no-billed by the grand jury that basically means that there is no evidence whatsoever to support a charge against them.

San Antonio First Offense Drug Defense Lawyer

A San Antonio Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer answers your question. Click play.

Gary Churak, San Antonio Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer answers your question. Click play.

Sure. Hot checks are notoriously persecuted by most district attorneys and county attorneys. Basically, the amount of the check determines the severity of the case. Often, hot checks writers have more than one check outstanding. What they do is they take you the accumulative amount of the checks, or they take one or two checks, and then file it. Hot checks are theft. My advice to individuals are, initially, they will receive a letter from the district attorney’s office or the county attorney’s office saying that they have these checks there and you need to pay them before we take criminal action. If there’s any way possible to work a deal to get these checks paid off, so the case is not filed against you, that’s what I’d recommend that you do. If by chance you can’t swing that, you can’t pay them all, then the next best thing is go get yourself a lawyer real quick because what the attorney can do is he can make arrangements to bond out of jail once you’re arrested. He can make arrangements to delay the case long enough, so you could pay the checks off. Often, I’ve been able to have cases delayed to the point where my clients had been able to pay the checks off, and then have the cases dismissed, so there would be no conviction or probation on their record which would mean that at a later date, you can come in and do an expunction of the charge.

Gary Churak, San Antonio Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer answers your question. Click play.

Under Texas law, there are basically two ways theft can be expunged. The first one is you get what’s called “pretrial diversion”. It’s a specialized type of probation that allows you to have your case expunged at the conclusion of the period of pretrial diversion. In Bexar County, they have very strict guidelines on pretrial diversion, and they’re available to anyone under the age of 21. The other option for expunction is you get your case outright dismissed or you’re found not guilty. That also, under Texas law, allows you to do an expunction. You can do what is called a “nondisclosure” if you received deferred adjudication probation. A nondisclosure is not and as effective as an expunction in that it seals the case to the private sector, but government entities and licensing agencies will still find out about it; whereas an expunction is a complete sealing to both the public and private sectors.

Click Play on the video to see the answer.

The bottom line, you’ve been charged with theft no matter where the case is pending, in municipal or JP court, or in the district court as a felony. It’s a very serious offense that if you’re not going to jail over can at least affect your ability to get employment, get apartments, to get loans, bank accounts. You need an experienced qualified criminal defense attorney to represent you on any case that you’re in charged with theft including any cases involving a NSF check, a hot check. Often, people write a check, transfer, or move, or something happens, and they forget about making a deposit, and the check sits there and have no clue that they even have a hot check out there until they’re arrested. Other situations involve people who for whatever reason have been subject to identity theft. I’ve had a number of cases where checkbooks have been stolen and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of hot checks written on forged signature. Attorneys are important because theft is a serious matter.

The benefit of a private attorney versus a court-appointed attorney is that the private attorney has more experience in representing defendants in criminal cases. He or she has more resources than the court-appointed attorney. Basically, a court-appointed attorney is going to be paid a set amount by the county to represent the defendant. It could be as little as 100 dollars in misdemeanor cases to 400 dollars in felony cases. So bottom line is you get what you pay for. That is not to say that all court-appointed attorneys are unqualified. But some of them are young unexperienced lawyers; some of them are lawyers that feel they have an obligation to do court appointments. The bottom line is usually with a retained attorney, you’re going to receive a more thorough defense of your case.