Very Early

Very early is the answer. You are going to end up entering a plea of guilty or not guilty before all the information is available. As far as discovery, often your initial appearances are within days of their initial arrest. Sometimes it’s set out a week or a month. It depends on the jurisdiction. And every court does things just a little bit different.

When You Hire DUI Lawyer Jackson MS

When an individual hires us, we send out an entry of appearance to the court. And that’s a letter that says, “I’m attorney Joey Franks. We enter a plea of not guilty for our client and set this matter for trial.” We enter not guilty across the board. It does not negatively impact somebody to enter a plea of not guilty. Prosecutors understand that as we haven’t had time to do discovery.

We study Your Records

So, we do a freedom of information act request. We review all the videos, all the audio and we review every report. Then I call my clients up and I’ll tell them what I think about the case, what it looks like. And from there, we can make a decision whether or not we would like to enter into some kind of plea negotiations or whether we absolutely want to take this all the way. Sometimes it takes months for the state to give me all the information. Sometimes the troopers have difficulty uploading their videos to the state system.