Once You Enter Your Plea, You’ll Get a PSI
Video Transcribed: Can you enter a blind plea in Tulsa Municipal Court? I’m James Wirth, an attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’re doing a series of videos related to questions about Tulsa’s City Court. And this one is, can you enter a blind plea in Tulsa Municipal Court? And the answer is yes. Just like in county court or state court, you can enter a blind plea. And what that means is, is that you’re essentially entering a plea of either guilty or no contest without the benefit of a plea agreement.
So you’re giving up your right to go to trial to require this city to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt, and you’re giving up your opportunity to work out a plea deal with the prosecutor, to present that to the court for approval. And you’re saying, “You know what? I don’t want to go to trial, but I also can’t get an acceptable deal from the state. So I’m going to go ahead and enter a plea of guilty, but I’m going to argue for a low sentence or a mitigated sentence.”
So you can do that. You can do that. And what happens in those circumstances when you do that in Tulsa Municipal Court is most of the time, they’re going to order a PSI. And that the City Criminal Court Probation Office is going to do a pre-sentence investigation and that they’re going to compile that together in a report, and then they’ll get that report to the court as well as to the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and it’s going to be set for formal sentencing at a later date.
So you’d enter your plea on one date, you’d get an order for a PSI, and then you’d be ordered to come back on a sentencing date at a later date. And between those times, the office does the pre-sentence investigation report and gets that to everybody. You come back before the court, and then the city makes arguments on what they think the sentence should be. And then the defendant makes arguments on what they think the sentence could be. And the judge then gets to make the decision on what the sentence is, anywhere within the range of punishment.
So that’s what a blind plea is, and you can do that in Tulsa Municipal Court. If you’re facing that decision on whether to do a blind plea or not though, you don’t want to do that alone. You’re going to want to do that with competent legal representation that is familiar, ideally with not just the process and procedures, but also this particular court and judge, get an idea of what they do in certain scenarios. To speak with a Tulsa criminal defense lawyer to get legal advice specific to your circumstances, you can do that by going online to makelaweasy.com.
