San Marcos Hays County Felonies

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT FELONY CASES

  1. The difference between a felony and a misdemeanor is the difference between prison and jail. A felony is any offense for which you can be punished by getting sent to prison. A misdemeanor is an offense for which you can be sent to county jail.
  2. It might be possible to keep a felony conviction off of your record, even if you are guilty. Judges may grant deferred adjudication for some types of felony offense. Deferred adjudication is a type of probation where the case is dismissed if the probation is completed successfully.
  3. Felony cases usually don't get filed quickly. Persons arrested for a felony sometimes get lured into a false sense of security because many months have gone by since the time they were arrested and bonded out with no case being filed in court. It simply takes a while for a felony case to be filed in court because a prosecutor cannot file the case directly. Instead, the prosecutor must first take the case before a grand jury, which is a group of people assembled by a judge to decide if a felony case is going to be formally charged against someone. If the grand jury decides that a charge should go forward, it signs a document called an indictment, which is then filed in a district court. Keep in mind that the shortest time limit for the government to file a felony case is three years.
  4. If a person is sitting in jail waiting to see if his case will be indicted by a grand jury, it is still possible for a judge to hear evidence to decide if the person should continue to be held in custody. By filing a petition called a writ of habeas corpus, a jailed person has the right to be brought before a judge in order to have the judge determine if the person's bail should be reduced or to decide if there is probable cause to further detain the person.
  5. If you think you need alcohol or drug counseling, don't wait until court to seek it out. Although it does not happen in every case, judges often lock up people on felony probation in alcohol and drug treatment facilities if they deem that their offenses were alcohol or drug related. You should seek treatment for yourself rather than waiting for a court to impose its own version of treatment.