Rockwall Municipal Court- Don’t just pay the ticket!

So you’ve got a ticket case in Rockwall and you want to take care of it. No one really has time to spend fighting a ticket case, so many people who get a citation just pay the ticket. Let me tell you why that’s not a great legal strategy.

Paying a ticket means being convicted. Now if your case is in Rockwall Muni court, then it is a class C misdemeanor. The most commonly litigated class C misdemeanors are traffic tickets. If you have a CDL, you don’t want any convictions. It really screws up your ability to CDL. If you have a regular license to convictions can screw up your license and insurance. If you just pay the ticket, guess what? You just got convicted.

There are also common non-traffic cases heard in Rockwall Municipal Court like

Public Intoxication- You get drunk at the Harbor, the cops find you, you get a ticket
Drug Paraphernalia- The police find your bong, the police take your bong, and you get a ticket
Assault- Some assaults are so petty they are filed as class C assault. It’s where you touch someone without their permission in a way the find offensive. Criminal noogie.

Those are things you probably don’t want a conviction for. So you need to get the case dismissed or get it deferred. You can try and do this yourself, but you may not be an excellent criminal defense lawyer. In fact, you might suck at this. Think about how I would do if I should up to your job and tried to kick ass? I’d probably be awful. That’s the same thing with defense lawyering. It’s a gig that isn’t easy to be instantly great at. I get it, no one wants to spend money fighting a case where the fine is just a few hundred bucks. But it’s the conviction you need to worry about, not the fine.

To recap- If you get a ticket in Rockwall Municipal don’t just pay it. Get a lawyer to get the case dismissed or deferred. It’s a good investment and will save you time now and prevent problems down the road.