What Are the Steps in an Oklahoma Felony Criminal Case?

Then the person either bonds out and then you get a court date to appear for your initial appearance. And if you can’t bond out, of course, you’re in county jail and you’ll be brought over for an initial appearance. So that initial appearance is kind of what gets the case started. It’s where the state of Oklahoma presents you with the criminal information, which is the charging document. It tells you what you have been charged with, and who the state’s witnesses are, and a bond can change at that time.

If the defense attorney, I, think the bond is too high, I could ask the judge to lower it, and then it’ll be up to the judge, of course. So you get the initial appearance and that’s kind of what starts the case. And then usually there is a preliminary hearing sounding docket or a preliminary hearing no issue, which is where have a court date, but there are no subpoenas issued. There’s not going to be a hearing, it’s just a conference between the defense attorney with the client there, the defendant there, and the state of Oklahoma.

And usually, that’s when the state of Oklahoma presents its plea offer to you the first time like, “Hey, upon a guilty plea, our offer is five years probation, fines, costs, whatever.” And then at that point in time in the conference, we would discuss it. And if it’s for sure we’re going to take the deal, then you set it for the course to eventually get a setting where you’re going to enter your plea of guilty.

If it’s a situation where you are not going to take the plea and then you would set it for a preliminary hearing, you would get the police reports first, and then the state of Oklahoma would’ve to put on a preliminary hearing, and call witnesses. I would get to cross-examine those witnesses, then the judge would decide whether there’s probable cause or not to send you to ultimately to a jury trial.

Now, again, a case can always resolve at any point in time. Cases can resolve at jury trial. I mean, you could enter a plea or there could be a deal with the state. So there’s always a chance to fight, but then there’s also usually always a chance to enter a plea as well.

So after a preliminary hearing, if there is a bind over, if probable cause was established by the state, then you’re set for what is called district court arraignment. And that is where you officially enter your plea. And until there’s any kind of agreement or a plea bargain, the plea is always going to be not guilty. Because if you were to plead guilty, then they would ultimately sentence you. So the plea, a district court arraignment would be not guilty at that point in time. There would be settings for any motions to be filed in the case, and also discovery to be completed.

Now, discovery is a list of all the witnesses for both sides, all the police reports, all the statements, all the photographs, any videos, body cam, just whatever the evidence might be. Both sides exchange all of that and that should be exchanged well before any jury trial. And that discovery process, a lot of times is called the Allen Discovery, Allen Discovery Hearing where the judge will be involved and say, “Hey, are both sides satisfied that each side is turned over the material that they’re required to turn over?”

And then after the discovery is complete, and then you get a jury trial setting, you have a date for a jury trial. And there might be some more motions at that point in time, some pretrial motions very specifically aimed at trial. And then either trial happens or it doesn’t either by a plea bargain, there’s a deal or a trial happens. So we’ll get into that later.

If you have any questions about the steps of the basic steps of a felony case, reach out to me, Stuart Ericson, a criminal defense attorney in Wagoner County, at wagonerlawyer.com.