Can I submit a motion to the judge or does my lawyer have to? I am trying to submit a motion to the judge pertaining to my felony probation. I have five years over my head and want to get my probation dropped from supervised to unsupervised.

Hello nik:

If you have a lawyer of record, HE must be the one to submit your motion. If he won't, fire him and do it yourself.

excon

Your motion is going to have to contain some extremely good reasons you don't want supervised probation. Just because you may want this to be unsupervised probation, the judge may not listen to your motion regardless of who files the motion for you. The judge assigned supervised probation for a reason. I doubt he'll change his mind if you have not done much of the probation. You also mentioned in your other post about wanting to move out of state. You also did not state what you were convicted of - just how many years. 5 years is a long time for probation.

I was sentenced to five years because of 2 felony distribution charges. I have done 15 months already. With no problems. And in Va 5 years is not that much. I was incarcerated with people that had over 20. 5 years seems to be the standard in Va for first offenses. But can I file it myself and what steps should I take?

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Originally Posted by nikbenwp

Can I submit a motion to the judge or does my lawyer have to? I am trying to submit a motion to the judge pertaining to my felony probation. I have five years over my head and want to get my probation dropped from supervised to unsupervised.

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All of these posts should be combined - they are basically the same question asked in different ways. Impossible to get the whole picture and give an opinion without skipping from thread to thread.

Continuing to post portions of the question/problem is confusing and results in very inaccurate answers because those answers are not based on all the facts.

Hello again, nik:

I know you didn't like my answer... But, Dude... It's the RIGHT answer.

excon

Thanks for your input excon, I am just wondering if you know the steps to take to file a motion? I am not sure how to do it, or make it a legitimate ,motion.

Hello again, nik:

Well, you write the motion. If you want it written exactly like a lawyer would do it, you buy a copy of the Rules of Criminal Procedure for the court you are dealing with. It will tell you exactly how the motion is to be typed. It'll tell you how much margin to leave on the top, the edges, and the bottom. It'll tell you how to address the motion. It'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about submitting motions in that court.

After you've written your motion, you take it down to the courthouse and submit it at the clerks office. You send a copy to the prosecutor...

What to SAY in your motion, I wouldn't know. THAT'S what lawyers go to school for...

OR, you could just write the judge a letter. If you ask him to consider it a motion, he will.

However, I don't know why you'd want to do all that, when the judge ain't going to read it because it ain't from your lawyer... But, knock yourself out.

excon

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nikbenwp

I was sentenced to five years because of 2 felony distribution charges. I have done 15 months already. With no problems. And in Va 5 years is not that much. I was incarcerated with people that had over 20. 5 years seems to be the standard in Va for first offenses. But can I file it myself and what steps should I take?

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Like I said, you're going to have to come up with some really really really good valid reasons as to why you want to be on unsupervised probation. What are some of your reasons? Five years is a lot, sorry to differ with you and 15 months is not enough time to show the judge anything except you seem to be "hampered" by having to report once a month and take a drug test. Sorry. Like excon so aptly put it "knock yourself out" and ask the judge.