Brandon DUI Attorneys are often asked by their clients about why they should consider waiving their speedy trial rights. Anyone who has been in a Tampa Bay area criminal courtroom has seen the overwhelming majority of individuals waive their speedy trial rights quickly and without much consultation or deliberation. Frankly, we strongly recommend that majority of individuals waive their speedy trial rights. Generally, we encourage folks to do so for three reasons.
First, it’s often necessary to waive one’s speedy trial rights because we are continuing discovery and investigate their case. This affects situations where we’re both conducting written discovery through subpoenas, public records requests and/or other written requests. It also concerns situations with conducting depositions. It’s often difficult to coordinate depositions in a criminal matter especially given the large dockets the majority of state attorneys handle, so at times in order to conduct all the necessary discovery depositions, it’s necessary to waive one’s speedy trial.
Further, at times many assistant state attorneys will not negotiate with an individual who refuses to waive their speedy trial rights. By way of background, the majority of state attorneys’ offices have a calendaring system where a case that is quickly approaching its speedy trial expiration is given attention by supervisors, which obviously affects assistant state attorneys who are in court handling a matter. When these cases are brought to the attention of their supervisors, they are ultimately forced to explain why a speedy trial has not been waived and why the case hasn’t been resolved yet. While we understand this is frustrating and not necessarily fair, it is the current state of affairs in our criminal justice system. This is just one of the many reasons, it is critical to get a local Brandon Criminal Defense Attorney to handle your case.
Lastly and arguably most common, there are simply other reasons to waive one’s right to a speedy trial. Just a few examples of these other reasons are that folks are preparing themselves to either serve the term of probation by completing tasks they have to before going on probation, folks are getting money together to assist with restitution, folks are not prepared to plea because of an impending license suspension or incarceration and they’re required to travel. There are a multitude of other reasons to waive speedy trial. At Hackworth Law, we’ll sit down and discuss this issue with you prior to making a decision as to whether to waive speedy trial or not. In the overwhelming majority of cases though, we would recommend to waive speedy trial, of course unless there’s a good reason not to do so.
It is worth noting though that there are limited situations where speedy trial is an effective tool to utilize in our arsenal. Generally, these cases take one of two situations. First, a defendant is sitting in custody, we would generally shy away from waiving their right to a speedy trial unless the case required additional time to conduct written discovery to properly prepare for hearings and/or trial. Secondly, if a favorable witness has the potential of dying if the case is continued too far out, we would again either demand a speedy trial or utilize the time limit provided by the rule for speedy trial expiration. This is to ensure that we’re able to utilize this favorable witness before their death and that witness’s testimony is lost forever.
If you have questions concerning speedy trial rights and/or Brandon DUI in general, contact the Brandon DUI Attorneys of Hackworth Law for a free case consultation. We’ve handled thousands of criminal cases in the Tampa Bay area and look forward to working with you to develop a customized strategy to defend your rights and interests in your criminal matter. If you’d like to contact one of our Brandon DUI Attorneys immediately, please use the “Contact Us Now” tab in the upper right-hand corner of our website. We look forward to working with you and appreciate you taking the time to check out our Brandon DUI Attorneys’ blog.