Can a defendant also plead guilty to a felony charge?
After a felony preliminary hearing in a lower court in which the Judge “binds the case over to Superior Court,” or after a defendant “waives” the case to Superior Court, the District Attorney may offer a negotiated plea to the defendant’s felony charges. Felony sentences are in ranges of years, not months, and felony convictions are of course considered more severe than misdemeanor convictions. The defendant may be sentenced to prison, or to probation, or to a “split sentence” of some time in prison followed by a period of probation. If some or all of the sentence is probated, once again there may be a fine, community service, other special conditions of probation such as Domestic Violence counseling, drug and/or alcohol treatment, banning from certain locations or from contact with the case’s victims or witnesses, and/or restitution. The Assistant District Attorney in charge of a case may again prefer to consult with the police and a crime’s victim before agreeing to a plea.
