What happens when you get arrested?
If you have been arrested, you need to protect your rights. Immediately contact a criminal defense attorney.
In this post, we will discuss what typically happens and what SHOULD happen during an interaction with police officers.
How do you avoid getting arrested?
If you are being investigated, there is often little you can do to prevent an arrest. The police have a reason to believe you are or were involved in criminal activity, and unless you can show definitively that is not the case, they will follow-through with the arrest. It is exceedingly difficult to prove that you did NOT do something, and words are unlikely to be enough for the police. If the police believe you have committed or were involved with a criminal offense, trying to convince them otherwise will rarely improve the situation and can often make it worse.
Your best bet is to exercise your constitutional rights. Simply stay quiet. Identify yourself to the officers and then stop talking. It is not your job to help the police prove your innocence or gather evidence against you. So, STAY QUIET!
What happens during an arrest?
Regardless of why an interaction with an officer begins, it can quickly begin to feel uncomfortable if they believe you are a suspect. They may ask where you are going or where you are coming from. They might ask what happened and try to rephrase your statements in a way that misconstrues what you actually said. It is possible they ask you the same question multiple times to make you repeat your story over and over. At this early point in the investigation, the police want you to believe that they are only trying to help you and that the best way to help yourself is to answer all their questions.
Police live by that phrase “give them enough rope to hang themselves” and that is exactly what they do. They allow you to explain what happened, but also give you opportunities to make a statement that they will try to use against you in the future. Many times, the police start an investigation with a specific charge in mind, but you could talk your way into additional or even more serious charges. Although you were only trying to explain yourself, you could potentially get yourself into more trouble. The more you talk, the closer to jail you get.
What happens after an arrest?
Once the handcuffs are on, the officer SHOULD read you your Miranda Rights, but they are never obligated to do so. An officer can make an arrest and never give a Miranda warning, and there is not necessarily an issue with that. Failure to give a Miranda warning only affects statements made to an officer after a person has been detained or arrested. If an officer makes an arrest and takes a person to jail without asking any further investigative questions, then the Miranda rights of a person may never become an issue. This is because Miranda warnings protect a person’s rights against unlawful custodial interrogation. Custodial interrogation does not begin until a person is lawfully detained or arrested. However, a full discussion of Miranda rights can be left for another time and place. Regardless of what point in the investigation you are, if you are having an interaction with the police that you did not initiate then there are only 2 things you should do: properly identify yourself, AND STOP TALKING.
Again, the best thing you can do is stay quiet and follow orders. Never has someone argued their way out of handcuffs. Courts and judicial systems give us a time and place to argue. The side of the road, in handcuffs, is not that time.
What happens once processed into jail?
If officers make an arrest, you will be placed into a squad car and transported to the local jail. Once there, you will be searched, photographed, and processed into the jail where you will remain until you can see a Magistrate Judge. The State of Texas requires you to see a Magistrate Judge within 48 hours after being arrested or as soon as reasonably possible. The Magistrate will explain to you your rights, the charge you are being accused, and set bail if they feel it is appropriate.
In Hays County, the Magistrate typically begins seeing inmates around 9 A.M. It is similar in Travis County, but a lawyer can expedite the process. Each County in Texas has its own procedures, but are never too different. Arrest, or granting of a bond, does not necessarily begin a criminal case. A prosecutor must take specific steps for a case to be filed into a criminal court.
Smaller Misdemeanor cases require a prosecutor of that county to file an Information and a Complaint. These two documents are exactly what they sound like. Information is the current information the prosecutors have, and a Complaint is the complaint that you broke a specific law. The type of charge determines how long the prosecutor’s office must file these documents, which is known as Statute of Limitations. For bigger crimes, known as felonies, the prosecutor’s office cannot start the case alone. They must gather local citizens into a Grand Jury and ask them, with the information currently available, is it possible the accused person committed this crime.
If any of these situations happen to you, you will need an experienced law team to help you. You deserve a team that understands the law and its applications, and who know the Judges, Prosecutors, and Court staff. Having the knowledge and connections help us make the process much smoother.
If you or someone you know needs legal help in Hays, Travis, Williamson, or surrounding Counties, do not hesitate to reach out to us at Villanueva, Salazar & Tucker!
