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  3. What Happens When you are Charged with a Crime in Tempe Municipal Court

What Happens When you are Charged with a Crime in Tempe Municipal Court

Feb 5, 2013 | Uncategorized


You reached David Black here. You’re watching our website, some of our videos. Today we’re going to talk about the city of Tempe municipal court, what happens when you’re charged with a crime in Tempe municipal court, what types of crimes might be in Tempe municipal court, how to handle, etcetera.

The municipal court is a court of limited jurisdiction. It is a court where felonies are not heard. Simply, misdemeanor offenses are heard. Misdemeanors are crimes in Arizona punishable by up to six months in jail, a twenty five hundred dollar fine plus surcharges.

The most common misdemeanor that we handle is obviously driving under the influence. It’s a class one misdemeanor. Playerpeople also get charged with domestic violence, assault for example or even domestic violence, criminal damage. You threw a phone on it, it broke and you are on a fight with a loved one.

You may also have a driving misdemeanor. Maybe driving on a suspended driver’s license and something that’s not too major. Every misdemeanor case in Tempe municipal court handled by a criminal lawyer is going to happen the same way. There’s either going to be an arrest or something’s in the mail.

There will be an arraignment. That’s the first day. It’s the date where the court will appoint you a lawyer or if you have a lawyer, the arraignment’s typically vacated. The matter is then set to a pre-trial conference.

At the pre-trial conference, I will go for you to Tempe municipal court. I will discuss with the prosecutor what the issues in the case are, our received discovery and our received plea offer. Generally speaking, I’ll continue the case to give you the client, and me the attorney, a chance to meet at my office. We go over with the evidences, what the plea offer is, where we are now and where we want to go.

If there’s a wonderful offer on the table, which is rarely the case at first, great! It’s a very easy case. If there’s none or we maintain firm that we’re not guilty, we begin the discovery process. My office will file a request for disclosure. We will ask for everything, from an officer’s disciplinary history to the calibration of the radar gun that he used to pull you over.

We will then file motions if necessary. We can have them set to evidentiary hearings. We actually won one of those quite recently in Tempe where a DUI was dismissed for a stop and if we don’t get where we want at that point, we’ll set the case to trial.

Please call me if you have questions about your case in Tempe municipal court. Every case is different. I can probably answer most of your questions within a few minutes for free and we can go from there.

Thank you.