The answer to this question depends on many different factors. These factors include the nature of your case, what county you are in, how fast the police agency acted, and to what court you are assigned. If your case goes to trial, it can be over a year before your case is disposed. If you end up pleading guilty in your case, it can be over anywhere from 4-6 months.
If you are found not guilty by a judge or a jury, the case will be over. However, there is still a record of your trial, arrest, and charge. You will eligible for an expunction of your record, however this does not happen automatically. If you are found not guilty, I will explain this process to you to keep your record clean!
If you are found guilty by a judge or a jury, the case will proceed on to a punishment phase. During this phase, the state may bring up any prior bad acts or history. Before the trial begins, we must decide if it will be the judge or the jury to assess punishment. Each case is different, and this is something we will discuss before your trial begins. Most people have the judge assess punishment in their case, as they see many of these cases, and understand the severity (or non-severity) of the cases.
If you have decided to plea "not guilty," you will have a trial for the finder of fact to determine whether or not you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The finder of fact with either be a jury or a judge. In general, almost all of my trials are held before a jury.
The jury trial will start with vior dire. This is jury selection. It is the attorney’s opportunity to talk with the potential juries about their thoughts and beliefs. In a misdemeanor DWI cases, the judge brings in about 25 people. From them, 6 jurors will be selected to sit on your case.
After opening statements, the state will put on their case. They may call as many witnesses as they wish, but in general will only have a few. Any officers on the scene, anyone working the breath test machine, any possible witnesses to your driving, and possibly the "Technical Supervisor" of the breath test machine.
If we set your case for trial, we will usually have to attend a pre-trial hearing. This is a chance for me to file any pre-trial motions on your behalf, and help the judge to determine how long your trial is going to take. The judge holds these hearings to speed up the trials, and to determine the order and scheduling of the cases.
Just because your case is set for trial, does not guarantee that your trial will held on that day. Most judges set many cases for trial on the same day, expecting some of them to fall through. Different cases have different priorities of which cases go first. For example, if someone is in jail waiting for their trial, their trial has priority over someone who is not in jail. Additionally, Domestic Violence cases have priority over others. After that, older cases get to go before newer cases. But in the end, it is up to the judge in the court to decide which case goes first and on what day.
This is not an "official" part of the DWI court process, but an extremely important step nonetheless. With all of my DWI cases, I will hold a video review session. During your video review session, we will look at the police report from you case, and review any video evidence from your case. I will show you the good, the bad, and the ugly. After we go through the video step by step, I will give you my opinion on what I think your chances are if we were to go to trial. It will then be up to you to decide if you want to plea not guilty and have a trial, or to plea guilty and accept the state’s plea bargain offer.
Frisco DWI Lawyer & Attorney Blog