Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Did your brother have a lawyer? If so, did the lawyer advise him to plead guilty? Had the prosecutor offered him a deal? Occasionally pleading guilty at the arraignment is the wisest thing to do, but in most instances it is much better to plead not guilty.

If your brother did this without a lawyer, then he made a huge mistake. There is no reason to plead guilty to such a serious crime without first obtaining legal advice.

You ask if pleading guilty makes a difference. You bet it does. If your brother had pled not guilty, he would be able to have a trial and potentially beat the charges. Alternatively, he would have time to make a deal with the prosecutor before -- or even during -- the trial. Having pled guilty, though, your brother waived his right to a trial. For all practical purposes, his guilty plea is a conviction. All that remains is for him to be sentenced, and he is no longer in a position to bargain over anything.

It is possible that your brother merely tried to plead guilty without the advice of counsel, and that the court refused to accept the plea. If that happened, the new date is a continuance of the arraignment and your brother is supposed to get a lawyer in the meantime. If he can't afford private counsel, he should get a public defender.

If the court accepted the guilty plea then your brother's options are limited. He can bring a motion to withdraw the plea, but he will have to show good cause for the court to let him do so. Few defendants can make such a showing. I have no idea whether your brother might be one of them.

As to the potential sentence, that depends upon what charges your brother pled guilty to (you list one, but there may have been others), how many counts of each charge were involved, and what enhancements, if any, were included in the plea.