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Have you received a desk appearance ticket (DAT) in New York? If so, don’t start to stress just yet. You have options and you’re not alone. We here at WinIt have put in countless hours of work researching how to maximize your chances of beating the charges against you and how to respond to a desk appearance ticket. Here’s what we’ve found.
What Are Desk Appearance Tickets?
A desk appearance ticket is a written order issued by the police that requires a person to appear in New York City’s criminal court system on your return date. Your return date is the date and time listed on the ticket.
These tickets are exclusively issued to people who have been previously arrested. Likely the person who’s receiving one of these tickets is no longer in police custody but has already been booked, processed, and released. But one thing’s for sure: If you’ve been issued a DAT, you’ve been charged with a crime and your presence is required in court to answer for that crime.
These tickets stem from a New York State law called the Criminal Procedure Law, specifically §150.10 of that law. As such, DATs can be found all over the state of New York but not in other states. This law permits police officers to issue DATs to individuals who have been arrested for certain crimes rather than subject those individuals to the standard arrest-to-arraignment process.
Potential DAT Ticket Charges
There are plenty of ways to get a DAT ticket in New York City. Any criminal violation, misdemeanor, or Class E felony can result in you receiving a DAT. The following list of charges contains just a few of those that can get you a DAT (rather than an arrest) in New York:
- Theft of services.
- Shoplifting.
- Marijuana charges.
- Drug possession.
- Assault.
- Trespassing.
- Driving with a suspended license.
- Certain Class E felony charges.
What To Do if You Get a Desk Appearance Ticket
On your return date, you’ll go through a process called arraignment. The arraignment hearing is the most important hearing at the start of your legal battle. That hearing sets the stage for all that’s left to come in the next few months (or even years). At your arraignment, you’ll enter a plea. There are three plea options for criminal violations in New York: guilty, no contest, and not guilty.
If you plead guilty at your arraignment hearing, you will accept all of the penalties and charges against you exactly as they’re charged. You’ll be responsible for facing the sentence in its entirety as determined by the court and the state of New York and you’ll be found guilty of all charges.
If you plead no contest, you’ll receive a legal treatment almost identical to that had you plead guilty. However, there’s one key difference: a plea of do not contest cannot be used against you in a civil suit further down the line. Pleading no contest is almost always preferable to pleading guilty.
The most preferable plea option, however, tends to be not guilty. If you plead not guilty at your arraignment hearing, you’ll start the dispute process. This is your way of telling the court, “You cannot prove that and I will not accept any of the penalties until you do.” Note that we didn’t say, “I’m innocent.”
In many cases, you can convince a judge and/or jury to let you off the hook for the conviction even if you did commit the crime. Talk to a lawyer on the WinIt app for more information.
Failure To Appear in Court
If you fail to appear in court for your arraignment, the judge responsible for that hearing will most likely issue a warrant for your arrest. Police officers can take that warrant and, for example, go to your home to execute it. One way or another, you will likely find yourself back in cuffs with your previously enjoyable liberty now denied.
Instead of being permitted to wait for your return date in the comfort of your home with the freedom to mill about town, you will now have to wait for your hearing in the police station, courthouse holding cells, or jail. Then, you’ll be subject to the standard arrest-to-arraignment process.
Should I Contact an Attorney for DAT Tickets?
If you’ve received a DAT, you should absolutely contact an attorney. In fact, if you’ve been arrested, even if you haven’t received a DAT, you should contact an attorney. Whenever you’re involved in criminal court proceedings of any kind, you should at least consult with an attorney.
Without talking to an expert criminal law practitioner (a defense attorney), how can you know what the best course of action regarding your case is? Think about that another way: Without talking to an expert healthcare practitioner (a doctor), how can you know what the best course of action regarding your health is?
Unless you’re an expert yourself, you probably won’t be able to. And, even if you are, two brains are better than one. Hiring an attorney to help defend you in a court of law comes with a long list of benefits—but it’s not without cost. Let’s go into more detail below.
The Benefit of Hiring an Attorney
The benefits of hiring a lawyer to argue your case are just as plentiful as grains of sand on the beach. There are so many, in fact, that it would be impossible to include them all in one article (at least not any article that you’d enjoy having to read), so we’re only going to cover three.
The first benefit is that hiring an attorney empowers you to achieve much more favorable results in your court case. Of course, there’s never any guarantee that you’re going to win. That being said, most people will agree that your odds of achieving a favorable legal outcome increase when you have an expert (or a team of experts) helping you do so.
The second benefit is that hiring an attorney reduces your workload, stress, and responsibility during the legal process. Whether or not you’re a lawyer too is beside the point. When preparing for your arraignment (return date) hearing, you’ll need to research plea options, case law, the outcomes of similar cases, and more in order to know what your best-case scenario is.
But, if you hire a lawyer, they’ll handle all (or almost all) of that for you. Most of the time, they’ll even do it better than you ever could have and in much less time than it would’ve taken you.
The third benefit is that hiring an attorney gives you access to somebody who knows the most effective methods of handling your evidence. You might be able to form an argument from the evidence on your own and maybe you know your Constitutional rights, but are you familiar with the specific chain of custody for evidence in accordance with the penal code of your county? Your lawyer is—or, if they’re not, they’ll know how to find that information.
The fact of the matter is that attorneys are experts at looking at evidence and using it to derive a narrative (a story). That narrative is what’s going to improve your chances of receiving a more favorable outcome in your case.
The Cost of Hiring an Attorney
Now we get to the difficult part. Criminal defense attorneys are not cheap. They often tend to cost more than $200 an hour in New York. This price alone puts the best legal defense and assistance out of the reach of many people. On top of that, hiring a lawyer is not a guarantee that you’re going to win your case—or even that the lawyer will change the outcome of your case whatsoever.
How to Hire an Attorney
To hire a criminal defense attorney to represent your case in New York, start by doing a little bit of research. Ask your family and friends if they know a good lawyer and if that lawyer might be willing to take your case. That’s called a “word of mouth reference,” which tends to be a primary business driver for defense attorneys all over the United States. Since it’s that common, you know it can’t be a bad idea.
If that doesn’t turn up any solid leads, look online. Google is a great source for finding expert criminal defense attorneys in your area. Its search algorithms use a combination of common queries alongside your location data to help you find great lawyers in your area.
Once you’ve found a lawyer, check their references and reviews. Then call them and schedule a free consultation. In that consultation, lay out the facts of your case, what charges you’re facing, and what you hope to get out of your trial. For example, if you just don’t want to go to jail, tell your lawyer you’d be open to a plea deal as long as you don’t have to go to jail. A plea deal enables you to plead guilty to a lesser charge with lesser penalties to save the court some time.
