Hi I’m Chris Morales, I been in practice of criminal defense for over 20 years now. I always get a lot of questions about sentencing. So I want to go over the basics of sentencing with you today. There are three types of crimes there is infractions there are misdemeanors and there are felonies. For infractions the most that happen to you is a find and you cannot go to jail if you are convicted of an infraction. For misdemeanors the most time you can do in jail is one year. That’s the maximum for a misdemeanor.
For felonies the most serious type of crime you can do up to an entire lifetime. Before being sentenced by the judge you have the right to have a sentencing hearing. At the sentencing hearing you can bring witnesses that can testify as to your good character. You can offer letters from former employers, school records to show that you were in school. Any sort of documents or witnesses that will convince the judge that you are a good person and you made this one mistake. Now the prosecution also has a chance to bring witnesses and what they may do is bring the
victim in the crime that you committed to court to testify against you. So it is a double edge sword. Now the judge has some restrictions as to how much time that he or she can sentence you to. The judge does not have to sentence the defendant to prison or to jail. The judge can sentence a defendant to a probation area period with the stipulation that the defendant stays out of trouble. Let’s say for three years and the defendant may have to go counseling, may have to go to NA meetings, AA meetings, anger management courses, something along those lines, but
without seeing the inside of a jail sail or prison cell. There may be some fines involved in a sentence that you have to pay.You’ll have time to pay those fines. Also there may be restitution orders if someone lost some money or there was some property damage the judge will order the defendant to pay or make restitution to that victim. Sentencing can be a complex area, if you have any questions about sentencing please call my office. We can make an appointment and you can come in and we can talk about the different aspects
of sentencing.
