If you are facing reckless driving charges in Virginia, the following is what you can expect from the process of your case. Additionally, a Loudoun County reckless driving lawyer is available to assist you as you navigate the legal system. Call today and schedule a free consultation to learn more and discuss your case.
It depends on the type of reckless driving case. By statute, you can be arrested for reckless driving just the same way as someone is arrested for assault, possession of drugs, or DUI. However, it is quite common for the officer, sheriff’s deputy or Virginia State Trooper to simply write someone a summons for reckless driving. A summons looks exactly like a traffic ticket but it’s much more serious because it tells the charged person when to come to court and what time. There is also a box that tells that the person has to prepay the ticket. The complaining officer should cross out or otherwise scratch out that box to further indicate that the person being charged for reckless driving cannot prepay the offense and that they need to appear in court. So there’s two different ways that someone could be procedurally “charged” with reckless driving. Sometimes, a person is taken to the station and their car is towed, for example, if they are arrested for suspicion of DUI but then only charged with reckless driving. In that type of scenario, they may be issued a warrant of arrest and taken to the station for further processing.
If you are charged with reckless driving in Virginia, you can expect that an experienced reckless driving defense attorney would ask you a lot of questions about how the alleged behavior occurred. They would go over with you the potential outcomes and will discuss how to achieve the best possible outcome in your case.
When you receive a summons for reckless driving, you will have a first court date and, by local rule in Loudoun County, that first court date is not your trial date. However, it may be possible for your defense counsel to achieve a positive result for you on that first date by being prepared and negotiating the best possible outcome. Also, depending whether or not it was a Virginia State Trooper, a sheriff’s deputy, or a town officer, it may not be possible to receive background information, known as discovery, in advance of that first court date. So while someone charged with reckless driving, and certainly your defense attorney, will be anxious to find out more about what the Commonwealth’s evidence would be, that may also occur on this first court date.
The type of evidence typically presented in these cases goes along with what elements the offense needs to prove. For example, if it is a reckless driving by speed case, the evidence presented would be foundational evidence regarding the determination of speed, including calibration of data from the officer’s radar and testimony from the officer about how they determined the alleged driver’s speed. If it is an accident case, then there may be much more evidence to be presented at trial, to include witness testimony, accident photographs, statements the driver offered to the officer, as well as potential video of the driving behavior if that’s available.
Northern Virginia Criminal Defense Group
