Court's Adjourned!

January 22, 2009 at 1:30 PM, The court Marshall enters the room, "All Rise!" The judge enters the room and takes a seat. "You may sit," he says. At this point I'm thinking "Oh Shit! This is going to be bad. He's not going to let me off easy. I have too many charges." As the judge gets himself situated, the state prosecutor walks into the room, up to the judge and grabs a file. " Hello, gorgeous!" runs through my mind. Once the prosecutor returns back to the door he call my name, "Brittany Barnes!" I immediately stand and follow him to the room. I think, "How lucky." Yeah, of course this is reality and nothing happens. He's there to negotiate. "The only two charges I am concerned about are the charges of driving with a suspended license and driving without an Arizona License." So he tells me what my options are. He wants to drop the charges of driving a vehicle with no insurance and driving a vehicle with suspended plates. The vehicle was not in my name so it was not his concern. My option is to plea guilty to the two charges and pay a fine of $602 or get my license re-instated with in a month and the charges will be dropped to $142, Or not plea guilty, return back to court with an attorney to fight my case. We all know what I chose. I got extremely lucky. I sign the papers needed to continue to proceed to talk with the judge. I walk back into the courtroom and wait to be called. "Brittany Barnes!", the judge calls after waiting 20 minutes. I take the stand and he asks me all his questions. All the answers are "yes". He asks me how I plea. At this point I never thought this word would ever come out of my mouth, "Guilty." I can't believe it, I feel like a criminal. Once I acknowledge that I understand my penalties to the crime and the action in which will be taken if I do not accept the penalties, I take a seat and wait for the clerk. The clerk calls my name. By this point I can't ever forget my name. The clerk has me fill out a yellow sheet of paper at my seat and bring it back up to her when I am done. Once my paper was turned back in she says, " The Court Marshall will call you to figure out a payment plan with you,please have a seat." I've been playing musical chairs this whole time. It would have been funner if they had music and minimized the amount of chairs in that place. After an hour of being in that courtroom, the Court Marshall calls me in. We go over my penalties and payments. He cuts me a deal, "You look like a nice person, so I'm going to give you 3 months opposed to a month to make your payment since I don't know which you will be making." "Thank you so much!" I can't believe it. I was let off easy. So now, it's off to find some money and give Virginia DMV a call to find out what action I need to take to get my license back. ^.^ I'm getting my license back!