Hi my name is Cindy Castillo with Castillo Law. I’d like to talk to you today about what happens if you are indicted for a crime in Arizona.

It sounds like a very scary word and a lot of people are in the system sometimes think that their case is now become more serious just because a grand jury has indicted them. That is not necessarily the case. Now it is true typically only cases where they’ve been charged with class one, class two, and class three felonies go this route. More and more frequently we are seeing the county attorney’s office at least in the Maricopa County going through a grand jury proceeding rather than choosing to do a preliminary hearing.

So what do you do if you’ve been indicted? Basically what’s going to happen is the court is going to set your hearing for an arraignment date. You will have to go before a commissioner or judge for the arraignment and at the arraignment the judge is going to determine whether or not you have hired your own private counsel or if you need to have a public defender appointed to you. What the judge will do is have you fill out some information prior to the arraignment date and if you qualify for public defender and they are going to assign new public defender at that time.

Now in some circumstances a loved one or a good friend might be in custody and so you might be asking: well what happens if they’re in custody? Typically the in custody person who’s going to be coming before the commission or judge will go through the exact same proceeding as somebody who is out of custody. The only difference being is typically the commissioner or judge is not going to be handling any release conditions at that stage. Typically your person is going to remain in custody at that point in time.

Now if you have been indicted it’s very important that you speak with an attorney to determine what route you want your case to take at this point. You may be determining that you want to go to trial. You might want to discuss with that attorney exactly how strong the evidence is in order to determine whether or not it might be more fruitful for you to accept a plea or to negotiate a plea at this stage.

If this is your circumstances or you have a loved one in this situation please feel free to contact my office. I offer free consultations.