I’m on vacation and I’m being charged with a crime. How will the process play out?

If it’s a serious felony-type crime, essentially what happens is upon arrest and bond hearing you’re given two court dates to come back for court. Those are 45 days from arrest to about 90 days after arrest. Also, if you request a preliminary hearing, which we always advise you to do, then that falls in between there as well.

Usually in those instances, we can get you excused from court for two of those and you have to come to the later one; that’s a requirement. After that the court structure is less settled in terms of court appearances. You may have to come back six months after that; you may have to come back a few months after that and the number of court appearances depends upon your case. It depends on how you’re pleading, whether your case is being set for trial or dismissed and there are a lot of other factors that go into that determining how often you have to come back.

Ultimately, if your case goes to trial then obviously you have to come back for that. Most felony jury trials last about three days and so that’s a big consideration for people in terms of the scheduling and getting on with their life after they’ve been accused of a crime.