You Could Be Charged with First-Degree or Second-Degree
Video Transcribed: Can I be charged with burglary? Hi, I’m Ty Smith, an attorney in OKC with Wirth Law, and we get this question a lot with individuals who come in and they’ve been accused of burglary by the state and they don’t exactly understand the ins and outs of what’s required of the state to prove for them to be convicted of burglary.
Here in Oklahoma, burglary is divided up into two degrees, first and second degree. First-degree being the worst of the two and second-degree being a lesser included offense, which we’ll get to near the end.
To be charged with first-degree burglary, you have to break and enter an occupied home with the intent to commit a felony, and this is where it gets important and kind of sticky, while someone is in that home. Intent to commit a felony can be anything, that includes stealing stuff, also includes obviously beating someone or something like that, or hurting someone. Those are felonies. First-degree burglary is an 85% crime, meaning that you have to have done 85% of the time you have been convicted before you’re eligible for parole to get out early.
The mandatory minimum for first-degree burglary is seven years if convicted and a maximum of 20 years, which is why faced with that, we definitely want to go obviously with the second degree, which second-degree burglary is simply breaking into any building or something like that, which no one is at home. The difference between those two is this one only carries a minimum sentence of two years and a max of seven years, and it’s not an 85% crime. You don’t have to serve 85% to be eligible for parole. Now, a lot of people ask, what is breaking? Maybe I didn’t kick down their door, or break a window, which would be obviously breaking.
That’s obvious. If the door is closed but unlocked and you open it, that’s a breaking. Think of it as a seal. You have broken the seal on the house by opening that unlocked door. That’s the way I like to kind of view it. You are still breaking that seal that divides the inside from the outside of the house. It has nothing to do with physically breaking things. That would make it easier. As I said, if you are faced with first-degree burglary, second-degree burglary is a lesser included offense, so it is typically a tool of your defense attorney to attempt to take a plea deal or take a plea bargain that is that instead of first-degree because of the 85% nature of the first degree.
Especially if there’s solid evidence against you, this is typically why a criminal defense attorney would lean in that direction. Now, if this is something that you are faced with or one of your loved ones is faced with, please feel free to contact me, an Oklahoma criminal defense lawyer. I’m at theoklahomacityattorney.com. Would love to talk to you about this and hopefully answer any further questions you might have and potentially help you out with the situation that you or your loved ones are involved in. I look forward to hearing from you.
