What happens if a person is charged with say 3 misdemeanors and 3 felonies pertaining to the same criminal act (e.g. bank robbery could involve illegal possession of a firearm as well as the crime of robbery).
Do they hold two separate trials? One for the misdemeanors and one for the felonies or are all of the offenses consolidated for trial purposes?
No the trails, if they are from inclusive crimes, are all held together. The prosecutor may not decide to even charge with the misdemeanors. lets say the bad guy trespassed and then killed a victim. The prosecutor would not even go with the trespass, unless state law made the punishment higher for the killing if there was another crime.
In your example the charge of UUW is a lesser included offense to the armed robbery. They likely would be charged with the misdo but the trail would be at the same time, even if there were multiple victims, the bank, the teller and the customers.
If all the crimes happened at the same time then the trials for the lesser included offenses (i.e. shooting someone has the lesser included offense of an assault) or even separate misdemeanors (i.e. the bad guy robs victim A and on walking out slaps victim B), are all together.
If for example the crimes were separated by time, place and victim then the trials are separate, no matter if misdo or felony
I believe I am qualified to answer your question. I was indicted in May of this year. It all pertained to the same criminal act. Yes, I was indicted for nine counts of second degree forgery (felony), and three counts of theft by unlawful taking < $300 (misdemeanor). No, they did not hold two separate trials, it is consolidated. I actually just got done serving my thirty day sentence yesterday, and it was the longest thirty days of my life. Now I am on supervised probation for the next five years.
They can be tried together since they were all supposedly committed in the same criminal event.
Felony and misdemeanor crimes are tried in separate courts.
Felony charges are first presented to a grand jury, the district attorney presents the case and there may be witnesses that can be questioned by the jurors. They determine if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial, if they decide there is they return a true bill, if they don't think there is enough, they return a no bill and the district attorney can either drop the case or return it to the officers concerned and tell them he needs more evidence. On true bills the defendant is indicted and the case will proceed to trial if he does not plead out beforehand.
Misdemeanors are presented by the county attorney in county court, they go straight to the trial court without review by a grand jury. Many times if a person is charged with some minor misdemeanors, the county attorney will take no action until the felony charges are disposed of, if the person receives a prison sentence the misdemeanor charges are dismissed. There usually is no point in charging a guy with driving with no drivers license, felony charges trump all misdemeanors so usually only the serious felony charges are filed.
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