What to Expect if You’re Facing Trial in Muscogee Creek Nation
Muskogee Creek Nation, if you’re headed to trial, what happens next? My name is Ted Hasse. I practice law in federal and tribal courts in Oklahoma. Today, I want to talk briefly about what it’s going to look like for you as a defendant if your criminal case is set for the jury sounding docket.
At this point, you have been unable to reach some plea agreement or perhaps you’re unwilling to entertain any sort of plea offer because you’re simply innocent of the charge. At this point, you and oftentimes, you know, well, they’ll be sometimes on these jury sounding dockets, 350 cases, 450 cases, phenomenal what they go through in a single day.
I don’t know how many defendants because, you know, there can be multiple cases per defendants, but just hundreds of cases sometimes. So you’ll be on a docket morning or afternoon for on one of these days, you know, you’d be amazed by how many people are packing into the courthouse.
Deciding to Move Forward to Trial
When you and your lawyer come before the judge, you will at that point be letting the judge know whether or not you plan to move forward to trial. Depending on whether your case is a domestic violence case or some other case, you know, it’ll be decided which of two terms you will be set on the term. There are different terms because, you know, different groups of jurors are being pulled from the community depending on the charge.
Now, at this point, the judge either will have a scheduling order for your attorney or will have their clerks and personnel reach out with a scheduling order shortly thereafter. You’re about a month away from trial at this point and there’ll be deadlines that’ll be coming up.
Important Deadlines and Preparation
The big deadlines are jury selection of voir dire. The judge will be asking attorneys for both sides to be providing their proposal for questions that need to be asked for jurors and jury selection. An important deadline will also be a deadline for jury instructions and this is, you know, strategically a very important step in the process of setting out kind of the rules and, you know, really framing for the court and, you know, of course then for the jury what the standards are and what, you know, what the law will be and how the jury will be instructed on the law as they go into the trial. There’ll be a final motions deadline and that’ll be, you know, the deadline by which your attorney will be making motions to, for example, exclude certain evidence from trial this wouldn’t be for a suppression hearing certainly if there was to be a motion to suppress because of, you know, some rights violation that would have likely been handled much earlier. This late in the game the motions they’re looking for are trial motions.
Now, you know, once you go through jury sounding and once you have your date you’ll get your number order, you know, in terms of priority. There’ll be a lot of cases set for these weeks but as, you know, it ticks down to the final days, you know, some of these cases will go away or be resolved, you know, through plea agreements but at that point, you know, jury sounding you kind of know, you know, when you’re going to be going to trial, when the final deadlines are, when you’re going to need to be there for hearings on motions and that sort of thing and then you’re going to be moving very shortly then toward a trial.
Call for a Low-cost Consultation
If you or a loved one is facing criminal charges in Muscogee Creek Nation and, you know, particularly if they’re headed to trial, you’re going to want to have good retained counsel. I’d say you definitely want to give me a call. I can be reached at (918) 947-6552. Again, my name is Ted Hasse.
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