PT24M17S
“so basically the theory behind probation is when you're looking at any kind of crime let's take a misdemeanor because that's kind of middle of the road um if you have a misdemeanor charge that's a class one misdemeanor carries with at a potential of up to 18 months in jail probation was designed to give people the chance to engage in activities outside of jail so treatment therapy basically a probationary period to see if they really can come back pay their debt to society without having to be actually put into jail so it's a sentencing alternative”
“so there are multiple types of probation too so people often hear of court supervised probation or unsupervised probation versus supervised probation so court supervised probation is basically where the court is saying okay person who's on probation you've got to do these things i'm going to trust you to get it done on your own so we're just going to court supervise you meaning that the court is going to be checking in seeing how you're doing but they're not like proactively reaching out usually what happens on an unsupervised probation is the court sets a review date and says okay i'm going to look to see if this person has done all the things they're supposed to do like traffic classes or domestic violence classes or alcohol classes and then they say okay if you have completed everything that you're supposed to do we will close this case out if you haven't completed everything then the court can issue a warrant for your arrest”
“there's a whole bunch of cases um basically the idea is if you have a case where as part of a plea bargain or a plea negotiation you're agreeing to do something you're going to be put on probation to ensure that you've done it um so like for example in traffic cases we see this all the time when someone gets a careless driving ticket and the district attorney or the city attorney says well if you do this class i'll either give you a reduced points or i'll give you the benefit of showing me that you can stay out of trouble for this time but that's on probation”
“you can also have jail before probation so that's something that a lot of people really don't know um especially on duis in colorado we have specific times where if you get a second third or fourth dui you have to do jail time or fifth or sixth obviously but so with a second and third dui their misdemeanor still but you have mandatory minimums of either 10 days or 60 days in jail on these duis so what that means is you have probation still after that but you have to do the jail first”
“so there are a number of different mechanisms in place first and foremost it depends on if you're on unsupervised probation versus supervised probation so if you're on unsupervised probation depending on the severity of the violation um if you just let's say you're on a traffic case and you forgot to turn in your traffic class completion so what the courts will do is they will send a notice in the mail saying hey you you're getting revoked on probation unless you come tell us what was going on here and they'll give you a summons and a date to come to the court and explain what was going on if it's a more serious case and you're on supervised probation the probation officer can also give you a summons and say hey you failed this ua you gave a hot ua so i'm going to make you come to court and they'll give you a summons if it's more egregious if you just completely stop talking to your probation officer and just don't show up and they can't get a hold of you probation actually has the authority to request a warrant for your arrest”
“sometimes the courts will do what we call revoke and run grant pro re-grant probation meaning they'll say okay this first time bad bad you didn't do it we're gonna revoke it and just restart the clock so if you had like a domestic violence case where you had two years where you were sentenced to probation if the court revokes and regrets your probation let's say you were on probation for a year you kind of screwed up you didn't do what you're supposed to do the court can say okay i'm revoking it and now you have to start all over that two-year probation so then you end up with three years”
“the other thing to be aware of and this is the most dangerous and most scary portion of probation is you don't have the same rights when you're on probation as you do before you're sentenced so for example if the probation officer says well i don't think they're going to comply with probation i think they deserve jail time you don't get to go to trial it's just a revocation hearing and a revocation hearing burden of proof is much lower than trial it's in front of a judge and basically it's your word against probations”
“so the number one tip i can give for people on supervised probation is talk to them even if you don't like them talk to them because the the surefire way to get a worn out is they're going to say well this person never talked to me so yeah i don't know what's going on with them and i'm going to arrest them just communicate communicate communicate”
“it's kind of weird because before a case is sentenced my advice is shut up don't say anything never talk to anybody never admit anything but then after you're sentenced be open and honest with your probation officer because it can only help um before keep your lips closed after you could blab as much as you want”
“if you take a plea where let's say it's a deferred sentence a deferred sentence meaning if you take a plea and you do probation you can get the case dismissed at the end yeah a lot of people have problems they're like well if i'm not going to have the case enter as a conviction why should i do probation what i tell them is you can look at it one of two ways you can look at it as hey i've just got to put in this time to make sure i get this off my record which is perfectly fine”
“okay let's look at the two most common types of cases that have therapy involved so duis and domestic violence cases dui cases you're going to have to go if you are convicted or take a plea for anything that is an alcohol related offense if it's the dui if it's a dwai even if it's what we call a wet reckless if you have any of those please you have to do alcohol treatment and therapy on the other hand if you have a domestic violence charge and you have a plea of some kind or you have a deferred sentence you're going to have to do domestic violence classes now in both of these cases the way that they're set up especially in el paso county is before you're sentenced so you take a plea agreement in front of the judge you enter your plea of guilty but then before your sentence on a dui you have to go through an evaluation”
“so for the dui evaluation you're going to go in you're going to have in non-coveted times you'll have to go in and sit down and fill it out and cover times they'll send it to you but you'll have a piece of paper like a couple of pieces of paper it's a document that you go through and you fill out answers to questions so they'll ask you questions about your life habits your patterns of drinking but there's some a little bit of trick to it so they'll ask you questions about how you used to be and how you have been since this incident i always tell our clients it's incredibly important for you to realize which column you're looking at because if it's it used to be you can be honest yeah but if it's the what you've been doing since you better be honest and it better be i haven't been drinking”
“if you're at this stage in the case only answer the question that you're asked so a lot of people will either not answer direct questions or they'll try to blab on about other things trust me they will get to the other things just answer the questions that you're asked it can be very frustrating and you can some people want to overshare some people don't want to share it all but as long as you're listening very carefully to what they're asking and answering the question that's asked of you you'll be fine”
“in both cases there are different tracks and different levels that people can go through based on the severity of the case and based on their answers um in both of them they have track a b c and d and then f for felony um so there are a variety of different levels and different placements that you can be put in but it's all dependent on number one your relationship with the probation officer and how you're treating them and number two how you're answering those questions and how upfront and honest you're being”
“let's take just a run-of-the-mill dui case for example let's say you're you've been charged with dui in the state of colorado two different things are happening and we've talked about this in previous episodes you've got both the criminal courts and the dmv if you were charged with a dui the dmv is going to require you to take level 2 alcohol classes now that's going to happen no matter what even if you're found not guilty the dmv is still going to require it so that's the first part of therapy is those alcohol classes they're teaching you about alcohol consumption i've had so many clients tell me i didn't realize how quickly you can get over the legal limit”
“now the amount of those therapy hours or the number of those therapy hours that you're going to have to do depends on number one your bac number two the facts of the case and number three your answers with probation okay so what you are asking is how do you kind of get a leg up and how do you look better towards the courts you can actually take those classes early especially if you're working with an attorney we at our law firm have a number of different people that we refer our clients out to to get started early just to number one get in there while you can especially if you still have your license and you can still drive around getting that stuff done early is really important but number two it really shows the da and the judge that you are being proactive”
“depending on what level you're put in it will be for a certain number of weeks the minimum that we see is usually 12 weeks on everything but that's for alcohol classes it's 12 weeks of classes and then an additional 12 to 14 weeks of therapy so just be prepared i tell most people this is going to take at least a year maybe more of your life to get through this”
“right law group was designed specifically to help people get on the right path get back on track so we're really working with clients who are saying yeah i either screwed up and i want to get back on track let me know what i need to do we do have clients who need our help because they were wrongly charged that happens all the time and the right path for them is getting this all taken care of”
“so the number one tip i can give for people on supervised probation is talk to them even if you don't like them talk to them because the the surefire way to get a worn out is they're going to say well this person never talked to me so yeah i don't know what's going on with them and i'm going to arrest them just communicate communicate communicate”
“before a case is sentenced my advice is shut up don't say anything never talk to anybody never admit anything but then after you're sentenced be open and honest with your probation officer because it can only help”
“they'll ask you questions about how you used to be and how you have been since this incident i always tell our clients it's incredibly important for you to realize which column you're looking at because if it's it used to be you can be honest yeah but if it's the what you've been doing since you better be honest and it better be i haven't been drinking”
“only answer the question that you're asked so a lot of people will either not answer direct questions or they'll try to blab on about other things trust me they will get to the other things just answer the questions that you're asked”
“you can actually take those classes early especially if you're working with an attorney we at our law firm have a number of different people that we refer our clients out to to get started early just to number one get in there while you can especially if you still have your license and you can still drive around getting that stuff done early is really important but number two it really shows the da and the judge that you are being proactive”
“if you can just say okay i'm gonna try to get as much as i can out of this you'll ultimately be very successful in probation”
“you can get out as much from these classes as you put into them”
“right law group was designed specifically to help people get on the right path get back on track”
“it doesn't have to be the end what we'll do is help you get into probation into therapy into classes the right way make sure you have the right frame of mind going in”