Can you get Discovery on an Austin TX traffic citation before requesting a trial / appearance? In Austin, Texas, you are given several options for an alleged traffic speed violation, which, other than the Request Trial and the Pay options, include a Driving Safety course option, and a Deferred Disposition option, both of which must be selected prior to the appearance date on the citation (which appears to be within 4 weeks of the citation). Would Discovery and Request for Information requests (would these have to be separate in Texas, or can they be a matter of a single request?) have to be entertained prior to entering a plea of not guilty (e.g., requesting a trial)? Do they at all have to be satisfied prior to the 20-work-days date of appearance as per the citation? E.g., is it at all possible to make a fully informed decision about which of the options to take on a citation (prior to the original 4-week appearance date), after having all the facts on the case, or is there no such legal rights at all?
This is a general answer based on the state of affairs in various jurisdictions. By that I mean it's not legal advice. Do not assume that the 20 days is the arraignment. Often the thing that happens when you show up at the 20 days is you talk to a D.A. (and I use that term lightly) who asks you if you are going to pay. Maybe offers you a "deal" which is mostly requiring you to pay the full amount but reduce or eliminate the record. If you try to talk to this DA she will act like she's not a DA and say that she can't discuss the facts. If you don't pay she'll schedule your arraignment and THAT's when you plea. Your best bet is to tell her that you are requesting evidence and in likelihood she'll put your date out far enough. You should consider the deferral and the safety course as offers. Offers the DA makes before you get all the evidence. No, you do not have a right to see the evidence before accepting an offer. You have the right to say no to the offer. That's the reason the offer is made; to save the DA the time of the process. (The song and dance I mention above is the pre-arraignment offer for low-level cases) If you reject the offer and get arraigned before you see the evidence you need to tell the judge this before you enter your plea. (Be prepared to show her the written requests) One thing - this stuff is all way easier if you have an attorney. And this is not the "consult an attorney..." disclaimer (although that applies!). Attorneys will short cut all of this for you. They know the clerks, they get you the front of the line at any appearance, and they generally give your argument credibility. It's totally unfair and it's totally the way it works. Walk into a courtroom at 8am and see 30 people waiting. No clerk, no one, just defendants. Between 8 and 8:10 various people in suits will walk past the bar and start rifling through folders on the clerk's desk. They'll read a folder and put it back. See, they're looking for their client. If you do this the sheriff will handcuff you.
The title asks about double jeopardy, but the the body seems to be asking about statute of limitations, which is a separate issue. If an argument regarding timeliness is made by John, it likely will not be based on a statute of limitations. If Jane is asking for a restraining order, she will have to show a high likelihood of harm. If further actions have occurred recently, then any statute of limitations would not apply. If four years have gone by without any further actions by John, then Jane is unlikely to convince a judge that harm is imminent. Restraining orders are not supposed to be punitive, but preventative, thus the concept of statutes of limitations generally does not apply; as they are supposed to be used to prevent imminent harm, only the current situation is considered. Long-past actions are relevant only as to interpretation of current facts. One does not get a restraining order "for" violent acts done against one; one gets a restraining order to prevent future acts, and uses previous violent acts as evidence of the likelihood of those acts. Asking a court to protect oneself from someone who has not been in one's life for four years is unlikely to go over well.
Is an attorney permitted to ask questions like those in either paragraphs two and three? Yes. That does not mean that they will be considered relevant or even appropriate, though. Is the witness allowed to decline to answer such questions for reason of irrelevance, or other grounds? Yes. In general, though, it would be safer for the witness to state an objection (be it on the basis of irrelevance, confrontational, asked &amp; answered, as to form, etc.) and answer the question nonetheless, rather than simply refusing to answer it. By simply declining to answer a question regardless of the basis for refusal, the witness risks affording a crooked lawyer the opportunity to falsely generalize that the witness was uncooperative. One exception to the idea of "object-and-then-answer" is where some privilege is the alleged basis for the objection, since the substance of the answer could be such that it amounts to waiving the privilege even where that privilege is legitimate. The witness may also opt to answer the lawyer's irrelevant questions even without stating an objection. Some questions are so obviously irrelevant, dull, or stupid that a failure to raise an objection will be inconsequential. In such scenarios, raising objections can only lengthen the deposition transcript and make it harder to read. For a real-life example of deposition with plenty of dull questions, take a look at the transcript (which I split in parts one, two and three) of the 4-hour deposition where I myself was the witness (you can download the case file, almost in its entirety, from this page). You will notice that I did not raise objections during the deposition, the main reason being what I explained above: To avoid giving the opposing counsel an opportunity to falsely accuse me in court of being uncooperative during deposition. Furthermore, addressing the crook's futile questions (1) projects transparency and helps on the witness's part, and (2) precludes a false &amp; misleading impression as if the witness had something to hide. After all, wrongdoers are the ones most interested in eluding testimony in ways very similar to this other deposition. The reason of being of objections is precisely that the law "is aware" that, as a matter of fact, lawyers indulge in all kinds of abusive questions when taking sworn testimony --be it in trial or at deposition-- of a witness.
In Spain, most traffic offenses are usually considered administrative sanctions and involve just a relatively small fine, and perhaps losing some points in your licence. In those cases, if the driver if the vehicle cannot be established (your example, or a far regular one of a parking violation in which the officer did not see who did park it and will not wait by the side of the parker until the driver appears), the fine just goes to the registered owner. When the fine is reported to the registered owner of the vehicle, he can report who was the actual driver who broke the law at the time of the offense. I do not know what would happen if the person named does not recognize his responsability, but my guess is that the owner has to pay the fine (HINT: do not lend your car to someone who cannot be trusted). If the infraction is so excessive that it becomes a matter of penal law then there must be a trial and then the accused must be established without reasonable doubt, so in that case such a stunt maybe could work.
The Google search is not itself a crime or any other kind of offense. It could be used as circumstantial evidence that you did something intentionally or with pre-mediation, rather than accidentally, or not at all. If you can provide an alternative explanation for the search that is plausible, such as the one in the question, and there isn't a close proximity of time, a jury is unlikely to give the search much weight as circumstantial evidence. But ultimately, the weight to give any piece of evidence is for the jury to decide in the context of all of the evidence in the case combined.
Because the hosts are part of the defendants. A party in a lawsuit can demand documents to be turned over to them from the opposing party. That is called Discovery and participation is mandatory. Not turning over the documents requested and not providing a good reason why they should not be turned over is contempt of court. Discovery under the Federal Rules is very broad. According to Rule 26(b)(1), &quot;Parties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense.&quot; The federal rules also provide several tools that can be used to get information from other parties, including interrogatories, depositions, and requests for admission. A party may also compel other parties to give them access to documents, real property, or other things for review or testing. See Rules 26-37. The Delaware rules of Civil Procedure mimic the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure very closely, and their Rule 26 is close to the Federal Rule 34. Especially interesting here is: Del. R. Civ. P. Super. Ct. 26 (b) (1) In general. - Parties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, including the existence, description, nature, custody, condition and location of any documents, electronically stored information (EST), or tangible things and the identity and location of persons having knowledge of any discoverable matter. It is not ground for objection that the information sought will be inadmissible at the trial. [...] The hosts are employees of the defendant, the phones contain EST that is regarding the matter and relevant to Dominion's claim, and disclosure is proportional to the needs of the case. As such, The employer has to make them comply with discovery requests by the opposing party and hand over the text messages.
Expunction may be possible for instance if you are acquitted, later proven innocent, pardoned, and various other things that fall short of being convicted and doing the time. The entire law is here (Texas code of criminal procedure 55.01). There is also the option of an order of non-disclosure, overviewed here. A requirement for such an order is that you were placed on and completed deferred adjudication community supervision, which from what I can tell is not what happened. "Background check removal" may range between simply taking your money and doing nothing, to doing what you could do yourself to get free of traces via radaris, intelius, spokeo, and so on to "request removal" from that web site. This will not make your record unavailable, because these websites don't have any special powers to reach into and manipulate state records.
The general rule is that in the opening statement, the lawyer may describe what he expects the evidence and testimony to show: We will present Mr Smith, who will tell you that he saw the defendant miles away at the time of the crime But cannot make statements of fact as such. I don't see why this rule would be different for a pro se defendant. In a closing argument, as i understand the rule, the lawyer may and often will say things like "As witness X testified, there was no time to stop" but is not supposed to introduce new alleged facts not supported by the evidence. However, in a closing, a lawyer can and often does draw conclusions from facts supported by testimony. "My client was proved to have been in the next town 20 minutes earleri, so obviously he could not have committed the crime." Again, i don't see any reason why these rules would be different for someone acting pro se.