You Can Decide Which Trial You Want
Video Transcribed: Hi, I am Oklahoma attorney Ty Smith with Wirth Law. And now we are getting to part four of the process of being convicted, maybe, of a crime in Oklahoma. And this is where it gets really exciting. We’ve decided to take it to trial.
This is the next step. If you haven’t pled guilty to something at this point then we’re taking it to trial. And there are two dividing paths, and two different types of trials. There is the bench trial and the jury trial.
The bench trial will go first because it’s relatively simple. You are entitled to a jury of your peers, we’ll get to the jury trial, and we’ll go back to it. But if you waive that right and you just want one person to hear it, just the judge, you can waive your right to a jury trial and the judge is also the jury. We take it to a bench and we essentially just have to convince one attorney, which that’s what a judge is, they’re just a fancy attorney, that you shouldn’t be convicted of a crime. And that’s it.
The other option of course is you don’t waive your right to a jury trial and we take it to a jury trial. If you’re faced with a felony you’re going to have to convince a jury of 12 people. Well actually scratch that. The state has to convince 12 people that you are guilty of a crime. And the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt for both a bench and a jury trial. If you’re being charged with a misdemeanor it’s only six people, but still, they all have to agree that you’re guilty.
A good defense attorney’s job will be to sow seeds of doubt in whomever the trier of fact is. So that is where your attorneys like myself come in. We are there to show that there is not just slight reasonable doubt, there’s great doubt that you committed this crime and you definitely shouldn’t go to jail for what you’re accused of.
Now after we go through that whole process of jury up next is of course sentencing, which I’m going to hold off that for part five of our little series here.
If this sounds like a process that you’re likely about to go through or you have a loved one that’s going through this process and you have questions please feel free to reach out to me, an Oklahoma City criminal defense lawyer. I’m at theoklahomacityattorney.com, and as I said I would love to talk to you about it. I’ll see you in part five.
