Minor offenses are usually resolved in a summary proceeding. Your signature on a ticket charging a petty offense admits only to the receipt of it and it contains your promise to pay the fine or appear in court. The best advice here is to appear in court because most petty charges are rather easily beat.
Once I got a ticket for driving in a restricted lane on the highway. I had been forced into the lane by some rather unfriendly traffic. However, I had already decided to bite the bullet and pay whatever fine the judge imposed. In my county court system, once you plead or are found guilty you wait for a court officer to lead you to the cashier. I had to sit there and listen to three other people use the same story of being forced into the lane. Each one had their case thrown out and I ended up paying $250 bucks including court fees. The short of it is, you should almost never be afraid to go to court and fight on a petty crime. What do you have to lose? If you're found guilty, the punishment is pretty much always the same as it would have been anyway. Take a shot; it can't hurt.
On the front of the ticket is your name as the defendant, the date and time of the offense, the name of the law enforcement officer who issued the ticket, the location and telephone number of the court, and the date for you to appear in court. If you wish to plead not guilty and have a hearing on the matter or do not plan to pay the fine immediately, you must show up! If you don't, you are probably guaranteeing you will spend at least some time in jail or pay some outrageous fees and fines. Either way, it is always better to show up. Of course this is all relative to petty crimes.
For most felony proceedings other than juvenile proceedings, the following steps typically occur.A crime is committed, it is reported, an investigation conducted and an arrest made. These may all occur in rapid sequence if the offense is committed in the presence of a law enforcement officer or if the offender is not very bright, skilled, or experienced.
Booking is an administrative procedure which records the defendant's name, the crime charged, and other relevant information about the defendant; contact info, photograph, fingerprints, address, and all that sort of thing.
Arraignment is when the defendant appears in court and enters a plea of guilty or not guilty, or sometimes no contest. No contest means you are not saying you're guilty, but you do not have the means, the smarts, or the desire to fight the charge.
The defendant is presented with a written accusation detailing the facts of the crime and his/her alleged involvement in the crime. If the defendant enters a not guilty plea, a date for trial is set. Bail is either set or the defendant is required to be "detained", kept in jail, until the trial. A bail bondsman is often called to provide the bail payment when it exceeds the amount a defendant is able to pay. In exchange the bondsman charges a fee and a lien against property as collateral of the defendant. If bail is posted, the defendant is released but must show up at the next hearing or bail will be forfeited.
Another bit of advice, if you are absolutely guilty of a crime where you face a lengthy prison sentence (five years or more) and in front of a court system with proper financial means it might be best to make a run for it at the point you post bail. The fact is most felony defendants, once they are arrested, get convicted; no matter what you see on television or the movies or how thorough, smart, or charming you think you are. If you do show up for court you probably will get convicted. The best advice would have been not to commit the crime, but we are past that point now. However, if you don't know already; you don't want to mess with bail bondsmen if you are not planning on showing up for court. Bails bondsmen employ “Bond Recovery Agents” and the law is very liberal in what these guys can do to hunt you down where ever you might go. Most of them have been catching criminals longer than most offenders have been criminals. They know the tricks and will screw you up pretty good if they have to.
Preliminary hearing is when a judge determines whether the defendant should be held for trial by determinging if the prosecution has met the burden of providing sufficient evidence that a crime has occurred and that the defendant committed the crime. Basically, the judge needs to know there has been a crime and you probably did it. This is not when it is determined definatively that you did it.
The ultimate but not necessarily final stage is the trial which is made up of choosing the jury, opening statements, examination of witnesses, presentation of evidence, closing statements, giving the jury its instructions, verdict rendering by the jury after deliberation, and entering of the verdict. In the stage of entering of the verdict the defendant (you) are found to be either guilty, guilty of a lesser included or related offense, or not guilty. Not guilty of course does not mean innocent just that what you did or did not do does not fit the statute of law in the jury's opinion, but that is another discussion. After a verdict is issued, the defendant may try a post trial motion, such as a motion for a new trial.
If the defendant is found guilty than there is sentencing, which is a hearing set to determine the punishment for the crime. Sentencing may also include the entry of mitigating factors including other convictions, compounding factors, victim's statements, character witnesses, and prior payment of restitution (payments made in advance of the established fine). In some jurisdictions juries or sentencing councils render the sentence. For most the judge would take the honor (pun intended). After conviction, the defendant has appellate proceedings, commonly the right to appeal, which may be available to determine whether all procedural issues were properly conducted.
Nothing herein is to be considered as legal advice. Merely, these are some of the things you can expect when you commit your next crime.
