Understanding Probation: Avoiding Costly Mistakes and Consequences
Are you on probation and you’re wondering what can happen if you don’t exactly follow the rules? My name is Carl Birkhead. I’m a Tulsa criminal attorney with Wirth Law Office in Oklahoma. I’ve been practicing law for about seven years, mainly doing family and criminal law. I want to help you to make law easy and talk a little bit about when you’re on probation, what it looks like, and what might happen if you don’t follow the rules.
A lot of people don’t think about this at the time that they’re signing up for probation. Regardless of what case you’re facing, misdemeanor, or felony, what the rules of probation are, what the conditions are, no one thinks about it. They think, oh, hey, I don’t have to go to jail? Cool, sign me up. Okay, that’s great. That’s an important motivator. You don’t want to have to go to jail, but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy.
The Challenges of Probation
There are plenty of times that I have people who don’t think through the logistics of, all right, these classes that I have to take, this money that I have to pay. I might have to check in with my probation officer. I might have to do random drug tests. I might have to do some assessments. I might have to do a 52-week intervention course, if that’s part of it, depending on what the charges are that you’re pleading out to.
So you’ve got to make sure that you understand what you’re signing up for when you sign up for it, because if you don’t and you don’t follow the rules of your probation, then you’re going to end up having a warrant issued for probation violations. If it’s through a DA supervision, your probation supervisor can request that a warrant be issued because you failed to check-in.
Consequences of Probation Violations
If it’s something where you’re on unsupervised probation, but you’re supposed to be turning in proof of your assessments and your classes and you don’t, the DA could do it on their own. I had a case just a couple of weeks ago. My client had a warrant because the state filed a motion because she hadn’t complied with the rules of her probation. And usually in those situations, hopefully, ideally, this person did do the right thing.
She realized that she was going to have a warrant issued. She called us immediately and got us hired, so we were able to help her before she was ever even arrested on the warrant. So we get in, and I say Your Honor, I’m entering my appearance on this behalf. We’re voluntarily surrendering. I’m asking that the court release her. Instead of making her have to go back to jail or pay a bondsman, she voluntarily surrendered to help us out.
Acting Proactively
And so the judge starts reading the motion that the state filed, and it’s just reading violation after violation after violation, failed to do this, failed to do that, failed to do this. After about the fourth one, I’m saying, Judge, I plan to have a very detailed conversation with my client about what is expected of her or required of her to make sure that this doesn’t happen and we can get back into compliance.
But as I say that, the judge just keeps reading and failed to do this, failed to do that, failed to do this, failed to do that. After about 10 of them, I go, Your Honor, I plan to have a very in-depth conversation about what is expected to get back into compliance because unfortunately, just in this situation, my client, I don’t know if she just thought she could sign it and then not follow through. I don’t know if she forgot. I don’t know if she got overwhelmed. We haven’t gotten there yet.
Schedule Your Initial Strategy Session
The point is, though, if you don’t understand what you’re signing up for, then you’re going to get it on the back end. The court’s not just going to let you ride off into the sunset and not follow through on your promise to follow the rules of your probation. If you have questions about it, if you’re in the middle of a criminal case and you’re not sure if you should take a plea because you’re not sure what you’re signing up for, or if you’re already on probation but you’re not sure that you’re going to be able to follow through on the recs, give a Tulsa probation attorney a call. My name is Carl Birkhead. I’m with Wirth Law Office, and I want to help you to make law easy. Call us at 918-879-1681 to schedule your low-cost initial strategy session today. Thank you.
