Ask Deandra – What Happens at My First DWI Court Date?

Hi, I’m Deandra Grant, and welcome to the Ask Deandra video series, where I recap blogs that I write on my website under the Ask Deandra blog series and put them in video form. What I try to do is take the top questions that are asked about Texas DWIs on Google and turn them into answers, via the blog and in this case via video.

Today’s question is: what happens on my first court date on my DWI? That is a very good question, but the answer can be a little frustrating, because the answer is: it depends. And what it depends on is which county you’re in, because we have 254 counties, I think, in Texas. Think of each county as its own little fiefdom, its own little kingdom. Every county does something that only they do, or they do it their own way, and the county right next door does something totally different, and the one next to that does something totally different. So it really depends, but I’m going to give you some general ideas.

In some counties, because it’s a misdemeanor, you do not have to appear on your first court date. Your attorney can appear for you. The exception is if the judge is going to modify your bond conditions by adding an interlock device. Why would that happen? Sometimes when you are arrested for DWI and you provide a blood specimen, they don’t know what the result is, so they don’t order any bond conditions like an interlock device. But then when the blood test comes back and it’s 0.15 or greater and your case gets filed, when you go to court the first time, the judge is going to modify your bond conditions to require you to install an interlock device on any car that you drive. In that scenario, you would need to appear in court, because you’re going to have to sign off on your new bond conditions showing that you know what they are. So even in counties where you typically wouldn’t appear on your first court date, in that situation, you’re going to have to.

Counties that don’t make you appear on your first court date would include Dallas County. Typically, you don’t appear on your first misdemeanor court date. In Denton County, a lot of times you don’t have to appear. In Collin County, you do have to appear on your first court date. So it’s going to depend. In those counties where you don’t have to appear, your attorney’s going to appear for you, obtain a new court date, get discovery from the DA’s office, all those sorts of things.

Now, other counties have what are called arraignment settings. Arraignment settings are kind of what they sound like. You show up, you’re theoretically going to be read the charges against you, though hardly anybody actually does that anymore. But you’re showing up, it’s your initial court appearance, and you’re demonstrating to the court that you have an attorney, all of those sorts of things. Denton County does arraignment settings, but they can be waived, so your attorney can appear for you in some courts. In other courts, you have to appear on your first court date, but you may not have to appear on subsequent court dates. For example, I mentioned Collin County. In Collin County, everybody appears on their first court date in misdemeanor court, and then thereafter, in some of the courts, you don’t have to appear; your attorney can appear for you until it’s a disposition setting.

Then we have some courts that do what are called initial appearance settings. Tarrant does that. That is where you get out of jail and they give you this initial court date. Your case is actually not filed. You are given this date to appear, and they’re really checking to see if you’ve hired a lawyer. If you hire a lawyer before the initial court date, a lot of times your lawyer’s going to file a letter of representation, and that initial court date’s going to get waived. Another way of doing it is, even though the case is not filed, you have to appear, sort of like an initial appearance date, but it can’t be waived. Rockwall does that. Rockwall has this random court date you have to appear at shortly after you bond out. Your attorney appears with you, and then the case is sort of set off until it actually gets filed. Dallas, going back to what they do, gives you what we call a bulletin board date, which is about three weeks after you post bond. They give you a computer-generated date and tell you to show up at the courthouse and check and see if your case has been filed. You really don’t have to do that if you have a lawyer, because your lawyer will be monitoring the courts to see when your case actually gets filed, and then will appear for you.

So it’s really just going to depend on which county you’re in, and your attorney’s going to tell you: yes, you have to appear on this court date, or no, you don’t.

But what actually happens, whether you’re there or not? What typically happens is the prosecutor and the defense attorney are able to speak about your case at that time. You might think to yourself, well, why aren’t you talking to the prosecutor before the first court date? Well, that would be great, but most prosecutors do not respond. It’s just the reality of the situation. You have to kind of be there in the courtroom with them, or in a workroom with them, so that you can talk to them face to face, because quite frankly, they’re awfully busy. They’re in trials, they’ve got millions of cases. So just sending them an email or calling them to talk about your case can be somewhat difficult. We may do that and get no response.

The other thing is the state has to turn over discovery. In most of the counties we work in, as soon as the case is filed, we’re already requesting discovery, and in most instances we’ve already obtained all the discovery before we ever even have a first court date. We may have already even done a case evaluation on your case. But it just depends. In Dallas County, we almost always have the discovery before the first court date. Collin County, most of the time we do. Denton County, most of the time we do. Tarrant County, we do about 50% of the time. More troublesome counties on getting discovery are Rockwall, and Ellis can be a little challenging, but often we’ve already obtained that discovery. McLennan can take a little bit of time to get discovery from, but normally we’ve got it before the first court date. So we’re already looking at your case, we’re already getting an idea of what the situation is, and then we can speak to the prosecutor at the first court date.

Now, I make it sound like a lot’s going to take place at that first court date, and it may not. Sometimes we have initial court appearances and we’re there, the client’s there, and the prosecutor’s busy. They’re in a trial, they’re just taking a break to pass all the cases, and then there’s not really time to have a conversation. So then we would reach out to them later and try to set up a time to talk to them, or attempt to have some sort of email exchange about your case, that sort of thing.

The first court date is probably the most nerve-racking if you’ve never dealt with the criminal justice system before, if you’ve never been in court before, but it’s really nothing to worry about. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to speak with a judge. You might, if they’re doing a bond condition amendment, if they’re adding an interlock. The judge may call you up and just tell you what’s going on, have you sign the papers, that sort of thing, and send you on your way. They’re going to give you a deadline on how many days you have to show proof that you’ve got your interlock installed. Sometimes it’s seven, sometimes it’s 10. But there should not really be a lot of interaction with you and anyone else. We typically tell our clients: show up, appear, have a seat, and wait for us to get there.

There are some courts where you have to check in with the bailiff when you get there. There are other courts where you don’t. So your attorney should be telling you, when you get there, this is who you need to speak with, just to let them know that you’re there. Or, when you get there, have a seat, don’t speak with anybody. Your attorney’s going to tell you what you need to do, because it’s going to vary.

And if you’ve been to court before, let’s say you had a case in Dallas years ago, and you’ve been to misdemeanor court, and you sort of have a perception in your mind of how it’s going to work, but then you get arrested somewhere else, maybe like Waco, McLennan County, and you’re going to go to court out there, it’s going to be so different from what you went through in Dallas. That’s just how it is everywhere. If you have a perception in your mind of what’s going to happen, that’s probably not what’s going to happen. It’s going to be a whole bunch of you sitting in the hallway and nothing going on.

Sometimes the dockets are very long. We’d love to be in and out: go in, speak to the prosecutor, get a new court date, get you on your way. It doesn’t always work that way. If there’s a delay in what’s going on in court, if the court’s in trial, they might tell all the lawyers to just wait till we take a break at 10:30 and we’ll deal with you. Or the docket could be really long. We go to some counties where the judge is calling each case individually. Ellis County judges like to do that, and you have to sit there and wait your turn, and just wait for the judge to call your case. So it’s not a very speedy process.

But other than that, nothing should happen. There should be no drama at your court date, unless you’ve done something to violate some bond conditions before then. Then you’re probably going to be having a conversation with the judge. What might that be? You have an interlock device that was installed at the time you posted bond, you got an order, okay, you’ve got to put an interlock device on your car, but you’ve had some positives for alcohol on that device. That may be something the judge is going to take up with you at that first court appearance. You and your attorney should have had a conversation about that. You shouldn’t be going into that blind.

But other than that, that’s pretty much how first misdemeanor court appearances work in Texas with DWIs. I wish I could give you more clear-cut information, but it just depends on which county you’re in. And sometimes, even more frustrating, within the same county, different judges do different things. So it’s really important that you hire an attorney that works in that county on a regular basis, because just because Judge A in so-and-so county does his docket this way, right next door Judge B might do a completely different thing. You have to understand what’s going on with the dockets, or you’re going to be kind of lost. You really need an attorney with local experience. You can certainly hire an attorney that goes all over the place, which is great, but they should have at least a little bit of experience in that county, so they’ll know how the different judges operate their dockets.

Hopefully you found this interesting. This is part of my Ask Deandra blog series, which is located on my website, where I answer all of these questions that people ask on the internet about DWIs. If you go, you can read up on this particular topic in much more detail than I’ve provided today, and hopefully you’ll come back and watch some more of the videos. If you’ve got a DWI case pending in Texas, we wish you good luck. If there’s anything we can do to help, give us a call.