Consult a Tulsa Attorney when Assistance Needed
Video Transcribed:
Will a person be incarcerated 100% for violating misdemeanor probation? That’s the exact quote of a question we received, and I’m Tulsa attorney James Wirth and that’s what we’re going to be answering.
So I believe the question is, what is the likelihood that you’re going to be incarcerated if you’re found to violate your probation on a misdemeanor? Is that a 100% chance?
And the answer is it’s definitely not a 100% chance. And it’s not clear from the question whether the probation is a deferred sentence or a suspended sentence, but that could make a difference.
If you are on probation for a misdemeanor and it’s deferred, then it may be possible that if you are found to have violated your probation that it gets accelerated to a suspended sentence.
So it goes from being deferred to being a conviction but allows you to maintain on probation and not going in custody. It’s more likely to be able to accomplish staying out of jail if it’s a deferred sentence than it is if it is a suspended sentence.
If it’s a suspended sentence, depending on what your violation is, the only thing to make that worse, since you already have the conviction, is to go to incarceration, or perhaps you could add on additional work hours or something along those lines.
So we’ve actually had a lot of success in preventing there from being incarcerated on misdemeanor violations. Most of the time that’s done by one, evaluate the case. See if there were violations, the severity of those violations, and what can be done to remedy those.
So if it’s something where costs were not paid, well the State’s got to not only prove that the costs weren’t paid, but also that it was willfully not paid. So if we can demonstrate that there wasn’t the ability to pay, then that’s going to be a defense there. The other one could be work hours aren’t done.
Then on that one and failure to pay, usually we want to work out a deal. We want to buy more time for our clients, keep them out, keep them a productive member of society, but buy them additional time to get into compliance. And then if we can buy them that additional time, they get into compliance, many times we’re able to get the State to withdraw their application to accelerate or application to revoke.
If it’s something more serious, as a new offense, then that’s going to depend. If it’s a new offense that’s serious, then a lot of times the violation of the probation on this one can be used to incarcerate, or there may be incarceration on the new offense. So depending on what the new violation is alleged to be and how strong the evidence is on that, that could be the predominant thing that determines what the deal is going to be.
But this could vary widely depending on the circumstances, so if you are facing this situation where you’re on probation for a misdemeanor and there’s an allegation that you violated that probation, you’re going to want to talk to an Oklahoma attorney privately as soon as possible. To get that scheduled, you can go to makelaweasy.com.
