So You Got Arrested
The Texas justice system can be messy- we talk to the key players to uncover what really happens. Hosted by BRCK Criminal Defense Attorneys, this podcast dives into real stories and hard truths from inside the Texas criminal courts.
We explore what happens after an arrest, how charges are fought, and what it's like to face the court system in places like San Antonio, South Texas, Austin and the Texas Hill Country.
Whether you’ve been arrested, have a loved one in jail, or just want to understand the criminal defense process in Texas, this show gives you raw, unfiltered insight from criminal lawyers, legal experts, and those directly impacted by the system.
So You Got Arrested
You’ve Just Been Arrested. Now What? Part 2
You’re in handcuffs. You’re in the back of a police car. So now what? In this episode, the criminal defense team at BRCK Criminal Defense Attorneys breaks down exactly what to do- and what NOT to do- immediately after an arrest in Texas.
Whether you’re facing a DWI, drug charge, assault, or any other offense, we walk you through:
Your Miranda rights
What happens when you're booked
When and how to ask for a lawyer
The bond and jail release process in Texas
How to avoid making your case worse
We’ll also share critical tips that could protect your freedom, your job, and your future. If you or someone you care about has just been arrested in Texas—this is the episode to hear.
Connect with us
The Texas justice system is messy, so let's break it down. You're listening to So You Got Arrested, the podcast that tells you what really happens after an arrest. Hosted by BRIC criminal defense attorneys, we talk to the people who've lived it, worked in it, and been shaped by it. Whether you're facing charges or just want to understand your rights, your options, and the smart moves that could change everything, we've got your back.
SPEAKER_02:You paid that bail bondsman the money for the bail bond. They posted the bail bond with the sheriff's department, and now your loved one is out. And so when they walk out, they got this stack of paperwork with them. And the paperwork has some things that are signed by the magistrate. What am I talking
SPEAKER_03:about? So I'm making a soapbox for a second here because Nowadays, they have all these conditions of bond and it almost like assumes that you're guilty. It kind of upsets me. In Bayer County, they've gotten a little bit out of control with, GPS is wearing an ankle monitor so they always can keep track of you. So they let you work with what's called partial GPS. But other than that, you have to be at home. And so, and then we have some domestic violence cases where people are required to take a domestic violence class as a condition of bond. And this is before you're convicted.
SPEAKER_02:You haven't even been to court yet. Your case may still be dismissed and you're already being forced to take classes, do counseling, wear an ankle monitor. And it gets me worked up, in all honesty. And I'll say this, Scott. I mean, it used to be the case that those ankle monitors, we would only see those on serious cases. Correct. You know, if somebody happened to make bond on a murder, you'd get an ankle monitor. Right. But there was a point, and I want to say it was right around COVID or maybe a little bit before, where we started seeing ankle monitors on cases that weren't as serious. I've seen them on drug cases.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I disagree with it entirely. And part of it is there's some, there's, I don't know how much I should say about this, but I know that the GPS people went to the county commissioners and were convincing them to use GPS more often. Oh, sure. And so I think it's entirely inappropriate.
SPEAKER_02:You mean there are people who make money off the criminal justice?
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Yes, there are. But we do too. Well, I was going to say not Not just the lawyers. Not just the lawyers. So sometimes we can get a lot of times we can get some of these onerous conditions changed. Sure. But once again, it's if you watched our last episode, we talked about we have to file a motion and appear in front of the judge. And in Bexar County, we're talking about a two week process. So so what we've struggled with with some of these conditions that I believe are inappropriate is you got somebody who gets arrested and they have a family vacation planned for Florida. And and what they tell us, like, well, we're going to Florida next weekend. Well, it's touch and go whether we can get a hearing within a week to try to get permission for them to go to Florida. There are still some judges in Bexar County who will let me just like kind of approach on it without an official hearing. But most of the time, we got to get an official hearing to get all that stuff done.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because these bond conditions, there are essentially restrictions on you. Yes, they are. And this is before you go to court. And this is the magistrate judge saying, hey, look, I'm going to let you out on that bail. But while you're you're out on that bail, you're prohibited from doing these things and that the things can be travel. I've seen bond conditions where, you know, and I've seen them out in these smaller areas too, like a Carnes County or whatever, where it says you can't leave Carnes County. And these are people that maybe got pulled over for a DWI driving from San Antonio to Corpus taking 181 and they're being told you can't leave Carnes County, which is absolutely,
SPEAKER_03:you know, I mean, and eventually we'll be able to get those conditions fixed. But it's important for everybody to know it's not going to be like you call us and, okay, an hour from now we're going to get them fixed. It's a process. We've got to file motions. We've got to get those motions heard.
SPEAKER_02:And some of these bond conditions, they can be very tough. Let me give you an example. One that we see all the time is in an allegation of domestic violence. You may have a husband and wife who are in a fight, shouting match, whatever it is, and now husband or wife whomever, as you said, women get arrested too. They end up going to jail and there's a bond condition saying, hey, you can't have contact with that victim. And the victim is your live-in spouse.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And they have kids together. So they're going to move in with a family member to comply with the conditions, but they're raising, they have kids together that have to be transported to school. Sure. And so, yes, once the other spouse lets the court know that they want it just to be what's called no harmful or injurious contact. So that's how we get a change. Instead of no contact at all, it's no harmful or injurious contact, meaning they can't assault them anymore or threaten them anymore. So we can get a change, but it takes a little bit. So it's a process.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And you may have a situation where you have maybe mama works and she relies on dad to help out with the kids and dad's no longer there. He's sleeping on the couch at his buddy's apartment while this case is playing out. So it can be a
SPEAKER_03:complicated situation. And so we have families that they have grandparents here in town who can facilitate that, but we have families who don't. And so then they're stuck. Like, so who's picking up the kids? Why can't I talk to them? And then, then we have people who pick up violations because they're pulled over for speeding and both, both of them in the car together. And so they're violating that condition of bond, which is now a new misdemeanor charge.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's a brand new offense. Yeah. And which is why, you know, it can be important to get an attorney involved early because you may have some of these bond conditions that an attorney can take care of before it becomes a problem. Right. But if you wait and you wait until you've picked up this violation, violation, what happens on a bond violation? If you violated that bond, what
SPEAKER_03:happens? So there's two things. One, you pick up a new charge. Sometimes if you're violating the no contact, it's called a violation of court order, which is a class A misdemeanor punishable up to a year in jail. But so then you make the bond on that new case. But meanwhile, the judge sees that you picked up a new case and revokes your bond on the original case. So you make bond, get out and get rearrested for a bond revocation for violating the conditions of your bond. So I said it before in the first episode, episode, you have to get an attorney as early as possible. Don't wait on this stuff. Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. You could just be setting yourself up for problems headed down the road. You are setting yourself up for problems. So let's kind of talk about this bond situation. And I know we've spent some time on it, but it's an important part of, you know, It's the important part of getting out once you get arrested. A lot of times, you know, people ask whether their attorney should be making their bond. And I know you have a very strong opinion. Very strong opinion. So
SPEAKER_03:it's an unusual thing in Texas and other states. Attorneys can't make bonds. But so we do not make bonds at brick defense. I have friends of mine who are private attorneys who do make bonds. I'm not saying that that's wrong. What I'm saying is there's a reason. The reason why we won't do it, and I didn't do it when I was a private attorney before I joined Brick. When you're making the bond for your client, all of a sudden, so if it's a$10,000 bond, as an attorney, they're just taking my guarantee and I don't have to actually pay the money, okay? But what happens is, if you don't show up to court, I'm losing$10,000. So your attorney's out the
SPEAKER_02:$10,000,$50,000, whatever. So all
SPEAKER_03:of a sudden, instead of worrying about doing the best job on your case, if you don't return my call, Then I get antsy and nervous that maybe I need to get off your bond, thereby causing you to get rearrested. So now instead of representing your best interest, I'm representing my monetary interest that I'm worried I'm going to lose my$10,000.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. And you could have your attorney who's on the hook, you know, if you have a serious case for$100,000, that's coming out directly out of their pocket.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I've seen that. There was a famous case back when I first started out at the DA's office where a family had killed their son's fiance because it was from a culture that believed in arranged marriages. This wasn't the approved woman that she was supposed to marry. So the father killed her and there was a$100,000 bond and the attorney made the bond and he went to India. He left. And then the attorney tried to argue that he shouldn't have to come up with$100,000. And he ended up having to pay? He had to pay a settlement, but it wasn't the full$100,000.
SPEAKER_02:And so when you're out on these bond conditions that we've talked about, some of which can be very strict, Who monitors those?
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so pretrial services in Bexar County monitors it, and they're way overworked. They have a massive caseload. So I always tell all my clients, they say, well, I tried to call my pretrial officer. Don't call them because then you can't prove you tried to reach out to them. Email them. So pretrial services,
SPEAKER_02:you know, the way I've always viewed it is it's almost like you're on probation before you start
SPEAKER_03:going to court. Pretrial services is a division of the probation department. Okay. Okay. So they are part of it. So you're reporting similar like probation. Yes. And so that's the other thing. I don't really want to talk about that in this episode yet, but, but so most defense attorneys are are of the opinion that you push the case, delay, delay, delay. The longer you can push the case off, witnesses may retire from the police force and move out of state. We don't necessarily feel that way at Brick Defense because for instance, if a condition of your bond is you have to have ignition interlock. Say you have a DWI, your blood alcohol level was above a 0.15. So now you have to have a device installed on your vehicle where you have to blow into before it starts, okay? By law, Once you get deferred adjudication for that case, you have to have that device on for half the term and you don't get credit for the year that you had it on before we worked the case out. Exactly. And that frustrates our clients. And so I say, well, you don't get credit for it. So if you want to tell me that we need to work this out as quickly as possible, let's decide that. But we are a little bit different than other firms in that we work to try to work things out more quickly unless you tell me– there are clients who have reasons, like they're waiting for a job promotion, that they don't want the case to be worked out quickly. And by quickly, I mean months, not days. But there's other clients who– who just want to get it done.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Because certainly within the process, you know, your attorney may have some say as to how quickly the case comes up for trial, how quickly, you know, uh, the discussions are had with prosecutors about the case. And so, um, you know, there it's most certainly in the client's interest to try to expedite things that way. They're not on those pretrial conditions for that
SPEAKER_03:long. Right. And so remember every, every case is different. There's cases we look at and say, Oh, We have a very tribal case here. There's other cases we're going to look at you and say, we're not going to win a trial. Right. So I was just, you know, one of the things we argue on DWIs is that they have probable cause to pull you over or reasonable suspicion is a standard. And that's the officer's reason for making the stop. For making the stop. But we have a lot of cases where there's a crash and there is, the officer didn't make a stop. Or the case I was talking to this week, he ran up the curb and his car was not drivable and he was sitting there on the side of the road at 281 and the officer pulls up. Well, I don't have an issue as to the officer's stop. Right. He didn't stop you. Right. You're standing at the side of the road on the access road I'm not going to, I don't have any triable
SPEAKER_02:issue. So kind of one of the quivers and the, you know, the arrows in the quiver that we try to use is gone at that point.
SPEAKER_03:Right. We're not going to be arguing about whether they had reason for the stop. You know, maybe we're arguing about, did they have probable cause to draw your blood? or those type of things.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and it's interesting because, you know, in talking about this pretrial services where people go report, it's a little bit different in the rural jurisdictions because a lot of these rural areas, these smaller counties like Wilson County and Atascosa County, they don't have a pretrial services department. So you're out on that bond and you're not having a report monthly. Now, some of the rural jurisdictions like Kendall and Kerr, they do have pretrial services. And so in those circumstances, you do You have to report. When you're reporting, you're getting drug tested, all of these things. So even though you haven't been convicted, you do have to refrain from maybe doing some things that you'd ordinarily do, like drinking alcohol, or there's people who imbibe in marijuana, or whatever the case may be. You can't do that while you're out on those bond conditions. Right.
SPEAKER_03:And so this, because you and I are all about common sense, right? But regardless of whether it's a bond condition or pretrial or anything, if you're in trouble for something, it always makes sense not to get in more trouble. So when you're trying to establish that you want a good result, it always pays to not have further
SPEAKER_02:issues. Not pick up additional cases or test positive for meth or something while you're... There's
SPEAKER_03:a defense attorney in town who is well known for like every one of his clients had like seven cases pending. And we used to joke that whenever he picked up, when a client would come in and have a drug case, the guy would say, don't worry, we'll get that dismissed when you pick up your other six cases. So yeah, I mean, we like you not to make our job more difficult by committing more crimes while we're trying to work out the first
SPEAKER_02:one. Yeah, absolutely. And that certainly makes a difference in the outcome of your case. If your client shows that, hey, while I was waiting for this case to be resolved, I didn't get in any more trouble, I worked the job, I did everything I was supposed to do, it makes it easier to show that that maybe that incident that they got arrested for was a singular incident. It was a one-time moment of bad judgment or bad decision-making versus, Hey, this guy's just a nuisance.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Because we deal with a lot of, we tend to talk about more minor cases here in this podcast, like DWIs, but we have cases where clients have been driving the wrong way on 410 and cause serious bodily injury to people. Okay. And so, In that type of case, we have a guy who they took him a year and a half to indict him. But I didn't complain about it because he was on that ankle monitor and he had the handheld device where he's blowing into. During that whole year and a half, nope, oh, we're out of time.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, no, we're good. But we'll keep up with this conversation after the break. Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER_01:The attorneys of Brick Criminal Defense have helped over 5,000 clients move on with their lives. When an arrest or accusation turns your life upside down, we have the knowledge, experience, and integrity to get your life back on track. Traditional legal ethics, modern legal tactics, the best defense possible to get you through the criminal justice system. Search Brick Criminal Defense to see our reviews and find out why so many of our clients have trusted us to fight for them. Brick Criminal Defense, helping our clients move on with their lives.
SPEAKER_03:The DA's office is not going to recommend probation on that case, but I could be able to get the judge to give me probation on it. And I do that by showing for a year and a half while he's on pretrial conditions, he did perfectly. We don't get that many clients who do that well, and he did perfectly. So now that client has given me all the ammunition I need to successfully argue to the judge. Well, it doesn't make sense to send him to prison now, judge. He stopped drinking. He saw the light and hasn't had a drink for a year and a half since this. And so why send them to prison now?
SPEAKER_02:Right. He's already following conditions that are similar to probation.
SPEAKER_03:They can't argue he'd be a bad candidate for probation. He's already proven he'd be a good candidate.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So let's talk about, and just briefly, situations where somebody can't make bail. So I remember as a baby lawyer, I was doing a lot of court-appointed work, and because my clients were indigent, a lot of them couldn't make bail. And I I remember the first time somebody asked me, hey, what happens when I hit my 90? As a baby lawyer, I had no idea what that meant. But if you could just explain what that means.
SPEAKER_03:So if you're in custody on a felony, they have to indict you within 90 days. Otherwise, it's required that you get what's called a personal recognizant bond. We call them PR bonds. If it's a misdemeanor, it's 30 days. And so if you're in custody, they have to get you charged within those 90 days. otherwise that you have to make a bond. Okay. Now, so making the bond changes the timetable for them. So if you're out on bond, they have till the end of the next term of the grand jury to get you indicted. So we're talking about if you committed a crime from January to June of this year, they have till the end of December to get you indicted.
SPEAKER_02:Right. There's a whole formula involved. But if your loved one, for whatever reason, can't make that bond because it's high, maybe even after the attorney did a bond reduction, or maybe you're saving all your money to make sure that your loved one has good representation, then your loved one, if they have not been indicted by a grand jury, Within 90 days, they can get out on a PR
SPEAKER_03:bond. Exactly right. They're entitled to get out. Now, the judge is going to probably give them conditions like wearing an ankle monitor and things like that. But you're entitled to be able to get out. Now, during COVID, they suspended all that. And so there's an open question out there. It's a little bit more complicated than what we can explain in a 30-minute podcast. Sure, sure. But that's in the end. That's the general rule. Yeah, that's the general rule. And in the end, I do want to emphasize expertise matters. Sure, sure. know what they're doing makes a difference.
SPEAKER_02:We've talked about these bond issues. These bond issues, they're there because that bond is collateral to make sure that you make your court appearances. At some point, you're out on these bond conditions and you get notice of, hey, you got your first court date coming up. That's called the arraignment. What is the arraignment? What's it for?
SPEAKER_03:It's just to The main reason is to make sure you have an attorney. Okay. Okay. So a lot of times if you have already hired an attorney, that attorney may file a motion to waive arraignment. So we already have an attorney. The other part of it is they want to make sure you know what you're charged with, which in theory has been done earlier, but they don't want to double check. And so the arraignment is just making sure that you have representation. Okay. Most of the time on the arraignment, the prosecutor does not have the case yet. Right. So there's not a lot that they, the prosecutor won't know what the heck's going on with the case of the arraignment.
SPEAKER_02:So a question that I always get from families and from clients is, hey, I have my first court appearance coming up. When I get to court, am
SPEAKER_03:I going to go back to jail? Right. Everybody thinks that first setting is going to go to trial. And we know first you have to be indicted before we go to trial if it's a felony. Secondly, once you're indicted, it's going to take a year to two years before we go to trial, and you're gonna go to court like every 30 to 45 days until your case is hot, or at any point in the process, we can work out a plea agreement. As defense attorneys, we have an obligation to get you a plea offer, even if you tell us from the get go, you're not pleading to anything. We still have to get an offer to show that we've at least taken you an offer. And then once we present the offer to you, you can say yes or no. And then that's where you need to rely on your attorney's expertise when they say, well, what's going to happen if we go to trial?
SPEAKER_02:So the arraignment... You may not necessarily be getting that offer at the arraignment, right? Oh, no. Heck no. Okay. So, you know, what I always tell people is the arraignment, it's pretty much an informal process. You're showing up. The judge wants to make sure, do you have counsel? And a lot of times when we get to the arraignment, we don't even have the discovery or the evidence from the state's filing.
SPEAKER_03:Half the time, we couldn't even work out a plea agreement if we wanted to. For instance, if it's a drug case, We're not gonna take a plea and they're not gonna make us an offer till the lab results come back showing what kind of drug it is, if it indeed is really cocaine or meth or whatever you're accused of. That takes six months. So the case is gonna sit there pre-indictment until they get those lab results back and then they'll go ahead and indict the case once they can tell the grand jury, yes, it's four grams of cocaine. So we can't do anything on the case till we see the lab report back. Same thing if you have a DWI, if they drew blood, We're looking at 90 days to six months before we get the blood alcohol results back.
SPEAKER_02:And that's where people get frustrated. Yeah. Because they say, hey, I was arrested 60 days ago. Right. And, you know, what's the status of my case? What's going on? And sometimes you're just waiting on the lab report.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And so here's an issue that comes up sometimes. We have clients who say, well, it's been... five months, I'm out on bond. I'm tired of waiting. I want you to file a motion to dismiss. Okay. And so what they have to understand is, so we can kind of, there's times based on timelines that I'm not going to get into. We could ask them to dismiss it, but then you get rearrested when they indict it later, when they get the lab results. So you have to make a second bond. So it makes no sense whatsoever to do it that way. And that's why you have to listen to the expertise of your attorney when you're Don't take advice from the guy in the cell next to you when you were booked who's been to prison twice.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, right. Or from episodes of Better Call Saul or whatever the case may
SPEAKER_03:be. Well, Better Call Saul I kind of like.
SPEAKER_02:So I know a lot of people get nervous about that first court appearance, especially people who have never been through that process before. I mean, you can imagine, you know, it's trying to figure out where do I go? What's going to happen when I get there? Where do I sit? What do I say? What do I do? So in Bexar County... What advice do you typically give people?
SPEAKER_03:I just tell them, you just show up, don't wear shorts, don't wear a hat, don't wear a t-shirt that says something stupid. All you have to do is sit in the court and look pretty. You never have to talk.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Now, a guy like myself who couldn't look pretty if he tried, you know, what should I be doing? Maybe you can get
SPEAKER_03:a wig or something. But no, you just... Don't show up late. And then remember, I may have five cases set that morning, so I'm gonna make my rounds and go to the different, and I'm gonna check in with the prosecutor, see if there's anything I need to know, like is the lab report back in yet? then we'll be told we can go. And on the pre-indictment settings, we don't even get a new date because you only get one pre-indictment
SPEAKER_02:set. So pre-indictment is where somebody might be attending court before their case is even formally charged. Exactly right. So it's technically not even pending
SPEAKER_03:in court yet. Right. So if you didn't show up to court, the judge wouldn't issue a warrant for you because you haven't technically been charged.
SPEAKER_02:But show up anyway. That's a little bit different in Bexar County because in these rural areas, you don't get a pre-indictment setting. Correct. It just sits there. Right. In your rural jurisdictions like your Wilson counties and Kendall counties and what have you, you're not going to court until your case is formally charged, until it's gone in front of that grand jury. But even then, even though you start going to court once it's formally charged, that first setting is really just a formality.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Now, and you bring up a point that comes up. So a lot of clients get frustrated, like what's going on with my case, what's going on with my case. And the answer is nothing until the prosecutor indicts it. Okay. And so we can ask the prosecutor to let us know when it's being indicted, but the prosecutor's got like 300 cases that they're indicting every month. Okay. And depending on the county. And so sometimes they forget to let us know. So the client may find out their court date, often finds out that they've been indicted before we do. And they're like, why didn't you tell me that we were indicted? Well, because they don't tell us, they send it to you first. And then we get noticed later on.
SPEAKER_02:So just this raises an issue. You know, we were talking about bond conditions. What happens if you don't show up for court? After you're indicted? Yes, or after indictment, after the case is officially filed.
SPEAKER_03:Well, if you don't show up to court, there's going to be a warrant issued for your arrest. Your bond's going to be revoked. Each bond, a lot of times because we know the judges, sometimes the judges will give us until the next morning to get you in. And so we can work on that sometimes. But we also have cases where somebody's in custody in another county and can't make it to court. But then we've also been able to convince the judges to just reset it for a while while we try to get them bonded out. We were just working on a case like that between counties last week. And so, You got to show up to court each time. I had a guy ask me the other day, why do I have to keep coming to court? Because it keeps getting reset. Because the court acquires you to. You just have to come.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's the promise that you're making when you're posting that bill. You're saying, hey, this is financial collateral for me to come back to court. I promise I'm going to come back to court.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And so the frustration is, well, a lot of courts are set in your case like every 30 days. So you got to take off from work every 30 days to show up to court when you know it's going to be reset. Because we're not even set for trial. And I say, well, I'll go to your court first and I'll get you out of there by 1030. So don't get frustrated with the process. The process is the process. It's the equivalent of getting frustrated with your doctor that he can't schedule you for surgery right away. He's going to schedule when it's scheduled. The system's going to work the way it works. What you want is an attorney who knows how it works. You don't want an attorney who's going to nod their head and agree with you when you're saying something that's blatantly untrue. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. And we don't do that. We're pretty clear that it doesn't work that way. So-
SPEAKER_02:You raise an issue of people get frustrated because sometimes it takes five months, six months, nine months before they go to court. And I know that throughout my career, I've been doing this 20 years, that people will ask, well, while we're waiting to go to court, can you at least get the evidence on my case? Oh,
SPEAKER_03:yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Can you kind of talk about
SPEAKER_03:that? The evidence generally is not all going to be made available to us until you're indicted, okay? And then, so usually, every county is different. Some counties make it hard for us to get the evidence that we're entitled to. Some counties, it's all uploaded online. But then... not only, for instance, I have a case where there's a bunch of medical records uploaded online, but it's password protected. So now I got to go back to the prosecutor and say, what's the password so I can look at these medical records. So all these things are things that's what we do. You think that we're doing nothing on the case. We're working behind the scenes to make sure that we have everything. Right. Okay. So we have clients who want to meet with us every two weeks. Well, instead of meeting with you every two weeks, I'd rather be look, trying to make sure I can look through the, the, 20 hours of body cam and dash cam that's uploaded, that most of it has no value whatsoever. But there's stuff that we have to do that doesn't involve talking to the client. It involves talking to the prosecutor. It involves going through this discovery. Because when the client wants to see the discovery, he doesn't want to watch eight hours of... back seat dash cam where there's nothing on it. He wants me to go through it and show him what's important. But I have to go through that for that to happen.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And, you know, it used to be the case that it was, like you said, counties could make it difficult for us to get discovery. But we now have this rule in place, the Michael Morton Act, which says that the state's obligated to produce all everything in their file to us. You but that obligation doesn't start until the case is officially filed in court. Correct. And so a lot of times prior to indictment, prior to the case being officially charged, we don't have access to a lot of those things. Most times we don't. Most times we don't, yeah. And it used to be the case back in the day, people would ask, well, hey, can you file a motion so I can see my evidence? And in some counties we would have to do that. We don't have to do that anymore. But the trade-off is we don't get access to that stuff until the case is actually officially pending in court.
SPEAKER_03:Correct. Right. Because we've been talking about the term indictment, which only applies to felonies. But let's talk about a misdemeanor for a second. So you could be arrested for DWI and the case isn't actually filed until the charged instrument is filed in court, even though you've been arrested and charged and they're waiting on the blood alcohol results to come back. And it's not until that case is formally filed, the information is filed in court, that all of a sudden everything gets kicked in and we can start getting discovery of things.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, right. And it just takes just a little bit of time to get that stuff done.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and by a little bit of time, sometimes we're talking six months.
SPEAKER_02:Right. For lab reports and what have you. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I understand it's very frustrating because some of these cases, we have clients who absolutely, they shouldn't have been charged. Right. Sure. Okay. But it takes a while for us to make that case get dismissed.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And that's the whole idea behind this podcast, right? Is that the criminal justice system here in Bexar County and the surrounding areas, if you don't know what to expect, if you don't know how it works, it can be extremely frustrating. It can be intimidating. People fear the unknown. And that's what we're doing here. We're doing this to maybe answer some questions, to shed a little bit of light on the system and how it works so that maybe people can breathe a easier when their loved one's charged with a crime,
SPEAKER_03:right? And we're going to be doing this for the next year, so we look forward to talking more.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to So You Got Arrested. If you found this podcast helpful, share it with someone who needs to hear it. For more legal insights and real talk from the front lines of the Texas justice system, follow us and subscribe. And remember, Brick Criminal Defense has your back. For more information, visit us at brckdefense.com.