What is a Protective Order in Oklahoma?

So a protective order is a civil filing and documents and process that’s not criminal to start. Now, it can become criminal. So a protective order is, you want protection from somebody or want them to stop harassing you, calling you, stalking you, following you, whatever the case may be. Again, that’s civil. You file your petition. Most likely you’d get an emergency protective order that a judge would sign, and it would be filed. They would try to serve that on the defendant of that. And then you would have a full hearing for that judge to decide, do I grant this protective order or do I not?

Now, the criminal part comes in when the order is entered and you have knowledge of it. You’ve been served the emergency protective order or the full protective order. You have it, you’ve been served it, and you know what you’re supposed to follow. If there’s an allegation that you violated it, it means the person that got the protective order has called the police, made a report, and said, hey, this person has violated this protective order. They called me at work five times. They drove to my house and stared at me through my window, or whatever the case may be. That’s when it could become criminal. They file a report, it goes to the DA’s office. If the DA files that, the first one out is a misdemeanor, but they will file that. There’ll be a bench warrant out for your arrest. And then all of a sudden it’s a criminal case. It’s a criminal case like any other that has to be proven by the state beyond a reasonable doubt.

So the state would have to prove, yes, there’s a valid protective order. You’ve been served with it. Here are the parameters of the order. Here are the witnesses or proof we have that you violated it. And then of course there would be a violation. And again, these cases are like any other, they are resolved by plea bargain or a jury trial. The first one, again, is a misdemeanor. Those carry up to a year in the county jail. If you’ve been previously convicted of a violation of a protective order, ones in the future can become felonies. So these are serious, serious things, and you’d want an experienced defense attorney to help you through this process of violation of a protective order.

I got one dismissed the other day, as a matter of fact, because the protective order actually was a no-contact. It was just a varied certain address and certain parameters, and they filed it and it was very clear that the allegations didn’t even claim a violation of what the protective order was guarding against. The person had not gone to that address. The person had not harassed or done anything. There was some contact, but it didn’t amount to a violation. And to that assistant DA’s credit, they re-looked it over and dismissed it. So again, everything is fact-driven. You need an attorney to really analyze and review the facts and the law to help you the best that possible.

So if you have any questions for an Oklahoma criminal defense lawyer, reach out to me, Stuart Ericson at wagonerlawyer.com.