Court Process

The first appearance in your Ventura County DUI case is called arraignment. Arraignment is the stage where the court formally notifies you of the charges you are facing. In nearly all of our Ventura County DUI cases, we continue the arraignment on your DUI case about 6 weeks, and pick up the police reports from the District Attorney. When we get back to the office, we send a copy of the reports to you, redacting any information that the law requires us to, such as any identifying information of anyone else listed in the reports. One reason that we send the reports to you is that while our experience has given us the knowledge to attack a Ventura County DUI case from every angle, it is you that were there and has the ability to know whether the officer’s version of events is accurate. We ask you to review the reports and get back to us with any mistakes or issues that might exist in the police reports. Once we go back to court for the second appearance, we’ve got a much better idea as to how to attack your case. There is no danger in continuing the arraignment in your case, and the penalties do not get any worse. In fact, there are so many DUI cases in the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office that when your case is on for arraignment, it sits on a shelf in a cabinet, and nobody from the District Attorney’s office is actually assigned to your case or even doing any work on it.

The next stage of the Ventura County DUI court process is called a Pre-Trial Conference, and we set our DUI cases for this stage at the second appearance. It is during this stage that your Ventura County DUI case actually gets assigned to somebody at the District Attorney’s office, enabling us to get additional police reports and discovery that might exist in your case. Pre-Trial Conferences in misdemeanor Ventura County DUI cases are only held on Fridays, so there is about a two month back log for these settings. However, once again, the penalties do not get any worse at the Pre-Trial stage, so there is no danger in the delay. The Court will typically allow two Pre-Trial settings, unless there is some outstanding discovery or some unusual issues in your case that can be resolved with an additional Pre-Trial conference in your Ventura County DUI case. UPDATE: As of July 2009, Pre-Trial Conferences are no longer being set in Ventura County DUI cases, mainly due to the overcrowding of the court system caused by the District Attorney’s overly aggressive filing practices and overly strict offers. It remains to be seen how long this change will remain in effect.
It is also during this stage that we do any research necessary for the filing of a suppression motion, which is used to challenge the reason you were pulled over and/or arrested in your Ventura County DUI case. Please see our Reasonable  Suspicion and Probable Cause pages for a more detailed explanation as to why a suppression motion might be filed in your Ventura County DUI case, and as to how it could result in your Ventura County DUI case getting dismissed.

After the Pre-Trial settings, your Ventura County DUI case will be set for trial. The decision as to whether or not to try your Ventura County DUI case is always yours. Typically, unless the judge feels that perjured testimony has been presented, you do not get penalized in any significant sense for taking your Ventura County DUI case to trial. And while the choice to try the case is yours, our job is to advise you on the chances of success so your decision as to whether or not to take your Ventura County DUI case to trial is an informed one.