Everyone needs help sometimes. When you are facing a second felony conviction, you should consider reaching out for legal help. Our law office knows a thing or two about defending felony charges.
With a proven track record and excellent service, our team will do what it takes to help you fight your charges and get your life back to normal. How can you defend your rights if you are charged with solicitation?
Living by the Golden Rule: How it benefits everyone. Prosecutorial Misconduct. A felony conviction in Texas is a serious thing that can have lifelong consequences. Not only can it have a lasting impact on your life, but it can also lead to the loss of basic civil rights such the right to vote, sit on a jury, and to own, possess, or use a firearm.
Convicted felons can also be barred from certain jobs including law enforcement, the school system, and health care. Witnesses are usually not needed at this hearing.
Usually at this hearing the date is set for the case to be heard at trial. Before the trial, the court may hear motions made by the defendant or the United States. These may include motions to suppress evidence, to compel discovery, or to resolve other legal questions. In most cases, witnesses are not needed at the motions hearing. If a witness is needed at this hearing, s he will receive a notice from the United States Attorney's Office. At some time before the trial date, the Assistant United States Attorney in charge of the case may contact you by letter or phone asking you to appear at a witness conference to prepare you for trial.
The purpose of this witness conference is to review the evidence you will be testifying about with the Assistant United States Attorney who will be trying the case. You are entitled to a witness fee for attending this conference. In many felony cases, the only contact witnesses have with the prosecutors comes at the witness conference and at the trial. Normally, when the trial date has been set, you will be notified by a subpoena - a formal written order from the court to appear.
You should be aware that a subpoena is an order of the court, and you may face serious penalties for failing to appear as directed on that subpoena.
Check your subpoena for the exact time at which you should appear. If for any reason you are unable to appear as the subpoena directs, you should immediately notify the Assistant United States Attorney who is working on the case. Felony trials don't always go on as scheduled. Sometimes the defendant may plead guilty at the last minute, and the trial is therefore canceled.
At other times, the defendant asks for and is granted a continuance. Sometimes the trial has to be postponed a day or more because earlier cases being heard by the court have taken longer than expected. Also, the United States Attorney's Office will do everything it can to notify you of any postponement in advance of your appearance at court.
Although all of the witnesses for trial appear early in the day, most must wait for some period of time to be called to the courtroom to give their testimony.
For this reason, it is a good idea to bring some reading material or handwork to occupy your waiting time. If you are waiting in a courtroom, you should remember that it may be against the rules to read in court. A felony trial follows the same pattern as the trial of any other criminal case before the court. The prosecution and the defense have an opportunity to make an opening statement, then the Assistant United States Attorney will present the case for the United States.
Each witness that is called for the United States may be cross-examined by the defendant or the defendant's counsel. When the prosecution has rested its case, the defense then has an opportunity to present its side of the case. The United States may then cross-examine the defendant's witnesses.
When both sides have rested, the prosecution and the defense have an opportunity to argue the merits of the case to the judge or, in a case which is being heard by a jury, to the jury, in what is called a closing argument.
The judge or the jury will then make findings and deliver a verdict of guilty or not guilty of the offense charged. After you have testified in court, you should not tell other witnesses what was said during the testimony until after the case is over.
Thus, you should not ask other witnesses about their testimony, and you should not volunteer information about your own.
In a criminal case, if the defendant is convicted, the judge will set a date for sentencing. The time between conviction and sentencing is most often used in the preparation of a pre-sentence investigation report. This report is prepared by the United States Probation Office.
At the time of sentencing, the judge will consider both favorable and unfavorable facts about the defendant before determining the appropriate sentence to impose. The function of imposing sentence is exclusively that of the judge. In some cases, s he has a wide range of alternatives to consider and may place the defendant on probation in which the defendant is released in the community under supervision of the court for a period of years , or place the defendant in jail for a specific period of time, or impose a fine, or formulate a sentence involving a combination of these sanctions.
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