William Cole practices in El Dorado County, Placer County, Nevada County and Alpine County in California, which include the South Lake Tahoe, California, Tahoe City, California, and Truckee, California courts. The procedure in each of these courts is similar.
Your first appearance in court is called your arraignment. At the arraignment, the judge wants to know whether you plead guilty or not guilty. If you plead guilty, the court case ends there. If you plead not guilty, the case is set for a pretrial conference.
At the pretrial conference, Mr. Cole will negotiate with the prosecuting attorney in an attempt to resolve your case to your satisfaction. Your case may be set for several pretrial conferences. You do not have to appear at the arraignment or the pretrial conference(s) if you retain the law office of William Cole who will appear on your behalf.
If the case cannot be settled or resolved to your satisfaction, the case can be set for trial. The decision of whether or not a case goes to trial is yours. You decide whether or not your case has reached a resolution that you can accept and, if not, you may choose to go to trial. If you do go to trial, the reason that you were stopped, the field sobriety test, the PAS test, and the evidentiary breath or blood test will be called into question in order to establish your innocence.
The penalties for a DUI conviction in California depend largely on whether or not you have had prior DUI convictions in California or any other state within the last 10 years. If a prior DUI conviction in California or any other state is alleged in your case, the law office of William Cole will obtain the records of that prior conviction to determine whether or not that conviction is constitutional, that is, whether or not you were fully advised and intelligently and voluntarily waived your constitutional rights.
If the records cannot establish this, then a motion to strike that conviction for use in the current case can be made. Some prior convictions from some other states such as Nevada cannot be used as a prior conviction in California and that defense will be investigated by your attorney.
If there was an accident and injuries occurred, you may be charged with a felony DUI and you could be sentenced to prison.
William Cole