New Bucks County DUI ARD procedure…

March 29, 2010

If you are offered ARD (Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition or commonly known as the "First Offender's Program") for your Bucks County DUI offense, your deal may have just gotten sweeter. The new Bucks County District Attorney has made some changes to Bucks County criminal procedure. The change to the ARD-DUI procedure was much needed.

First, Bucks County ARD DUI cases are now being consolidated and are scheduled for court only two days per week now (usually Wednesday and Thursday) as opposed to five days per week. In addition, the DUI-ARD cases are now separated from the other Bucks County criminal cases, including DUI guilty pleas, DUI motion hearings, and DUI trials. DUI Court still meets at 9:00 a.m. For the first half hour or so the DUI defendants and their attorneys go over and sign the ARD Agreement. A judge will then take the bench and go through the ARD colloquy and soon enough the ARD procedure is over.

In my experience the first few weeks of this new Bucks County ARD procedure was not any more efficient than the "old" way. Now, the court and the Bucks County District Attorney's Office have got the procedure down. If we just had more judges, the remainder of the Bucks County DUI cases would also run efficiently. Hopefully the new DA will make some more changes!

1 comments:

Anonymous,  April 5, 2010 at 8:14 AM  

No defendant should be entering a guilty plea or enter into the ARD, . without full discovery being submitted by the prosecution, and the defense determining if a challange can be made somewhere.

Police make mistakes all the time, both honest and dishonest mistakes.

I would think that the biggest delay in any DUI is getting full discovery.

I would hope that Judges do not exclude defendants from ARD, just because they want full discovery.

To me this would be the biggest delay, .... as everyone knows in the 31 appearances over 51 months in my case, ... full discovery was never completed.

What I think the article talks about is mainly saving the attorney time, maybe a couple of hours in court, . for a defendant just wanting the ARD, who doesnt care about discovery.

As far as more judges go, .... the DA should have no real command of this.

even though the courts are in bed with the state, ..... they should sleep on seperate sides, if you get my drift.

how much more streamlined can it be? they have seperate court for ARD,..... THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY GOES OVER THE PROCESS WITH THE CLIENT, .... HOPEFULLY BEFORE THEY GO TO COURT,.... you go to court, get the paper work, .... the judge calls the calamnder, the defendant goes up there with attorney, and agrees on record to enter ARD.

THAT process seems mighty streamlined and fast to me, ....

but as i said, is microscopic in time compared to obtaining all tyhe PROPER discovery one might ask for, .. that shouldnt exclude a defndant from eventauully entering ARD.

am i wrong here?

jim

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