Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: First felony charge

Thank you for your posting.

At your first court date, your arraignment, a plea of guilty or not guilty is entered, and your attorney gets a copy of all discovery, including testing on the drugs, typically, and a police report. A pretrial, or felony settlement conference, or "pre-prelim", is set, to negotiate your case, and a preliminary hearing date is set or waived.

The police don't necessarily have to test your blood or urine for use if you are just being charged with possession, and not being under the influence.

I hope that this helps, but if you have other questions, want more information, or feel that you need legal representation, please feel free to contact me directly at [email protected]. I'm happy to help in any way that I can.

Re: First felony charge

I assume that you are being charged with possession of meth, not under the influence of meth. Whether or not they drug tested you is not relevant to the "possession" charge. In other words, possession of (without being under the influence of) meth is still a crime. However, depending on where the drugs were found and the circumstances by which they were found, you might be able to argue lack of knowledge of the meth. In which case, your fiance would probably have to admit that the meth was his in order for your case to be dismissed.

You should probably ask your attorney what he thinks about what I just wrote.

At an arraignment, the only thing that occurs is the judge takes a plea from you. A pre-trial or preliminary hearing is set for a latter date. In the meantime, your attorney should be gathering information (discovery) from the appropriate police agencies/district attorney's office. Good luck.