Superior Court

Occasionally when people are stopped for DUI and arrested the search will turn up a felony drug. Let’s say it might be a small amount of cocaine or it might be a little bit of meth or some other type of felony drug that’s going to get you in a lot of trouble. That case is not going to be handled in a misdemeanor court like a DUI would be. It’s going to be moved to Superior Court. Superior Court is the court of general jurisdiction, meaning they handle all kinds of trials from murder to real estate challenges to divorce.

Superior Court is where serious offenses are dealt with. If you ever see a murder trial, it’s always Superior Court in Georgia, unless, of course, it is a federal case. Superior Court gets the case and you’re dealing with the district attorney, not the solicitor. You’re dealing with the judge who’s used to handing out long jail sentences.

An attorney’s job in those situations is to look at the evidence, see if they can get the seizure of the evidence excluded and see if they can have the quantity adjusted so that it’s a less serious offense and it’s not going to be a charge where you’re trafficking in the drug. Then they work backward from there.

One thing an attorney can tell you is that when they have that kind of case, if they can get into a certain disposition for a first offender, you may end up with no DUI while they work through the process of trying to get you a disposition that will keep your state record clean forever.

Don’t give up. Don’t think you do not have a choice. Don’t think you are simply going to walk in and plead guilty or go with a public defender, and since you don’t have any money, you ought to look into this and get your free interview. An attorney may be able to give you some good news on those cases.