An Application to Revoke Is to Revoke a Suspended Sentence
Video Transcribed: What is an application to revoke or an application to accelerate in Oklahoma Law? I am Stuart Erickson, Wagoner attorney. After a plea deal of probation in Oklahoma, there are two types of probation, there’s a suspended sentence, will you be on probation, or a deferred sentence when you’re on probation? And let’s just say you’re serving a five-year probationary sentence, so five years you are on probation.
An application to revoke is to revoke a suspended sentence. Now a suspended sentence is a permanent conviction on your record, a deferred sentence is where the judge defers sentencing for that five years. At the end of five years if you do everything right the judge will come back dismiss and expunge that case.
But now an application to revoke or accelerate is when a person violates their probation, either by committing a new crime or by violating a technical part of your probation, like not paying your fines and costs with the court clerk’s office.
If you’re supposed to go get a drug and alcohol evaluation and follow those recommendations if you fail to do that the DA’s office will file an application and basically say go back to the judge and say judge, this defendant has violated their probation, we want them to go to prison, or we want some sort of sanction or something like that.
So when an application is filed you are entitled to a hearing. Again, it’s not a jury trial though, it would only be to the judge. The state would have to prove that you violated your probation either by putting on evidence of a new crime you committed, or by simply calling your probation officer, and maybe the probation officer just testifies he’s failed to report in person, or she’s failed to report in person, that’s a violation.
Now as to your defense attorney many times what can be done, especially for technical violations, is to stipulate. Let’s say you’ve just failed to report and you have some reasons but the person ignored it.
So as your attorney I would try to get the DA’s office to agree and say hey, we agree we have failed to report but hold off on this application, let’s let us get back into compliance. We will report in let’s say six months, let’s hold this off for six months, let my client prove that they can report. And so after six months if you’ve reported then that application can be dismissed.
Now if there’s just a complete failure, again, let’s say it’s a five year suspended sentence, that is a conviction, so if the state were to prove that you violated it and the judge says yeah, you’re not fit for probation any longer, the judge could sentence you to five years in prison or less, anywhere up to five. So that is how that works.
And of course, you can fight it if you have proof that you’ve paid, or proof that you’ve reported and the state is just wrong, which they can be, it can be fought. If it is just a violation then we try to work something out to try to keep you out of prison. If you have any questions I’m Stuart Erickson, the Wagoner Lawyer.
