 Hi, I'm David Cantor with the Law Offices of David Michael Cantor, and today I'm going to talk about the Manistee Justice Court. Now, if you were stopped by a sheriff's officer or DPS officer and charged with a misdemeanor, you will be sent to a justice court. Now, if you're charged with a misdemeanor by a city cop, that's city court, and that's a different topic. If you fall within certain jurisdictional boundaries, you are going to be in the Manistee Justice Court. Now, the Manistee Justice Court, and I have a map here, has Cactus Road to the north, Camelback to the south, the I-17 to the east, and the 91st Avenue to the west. But you see how it's jagged? The actual yellow is the jurisdiction. So if an officer stopped you over here, but sent you into the jurisdictional court, you have a jurisdictional defense, and we can have your whole case thrown out, which would be nice. Now, the Manistee Justice Court is located at 14264 West Tierra Buena Lane. That's in surprise, Arizona, 85374. Now the parking there is plentiful. You don't have to pay for it, so that's nice. When you go into court, make sure you're dressed properly. No sunglasses, no hats, no cutoffs. You should wear a collared shirt and look as if you're going on a job interview. That will help you the most with the judge and the prosecutor. Now, once you get in front of the judge, and in this case, it's Donald Watts. He's a newly elected judge, so I don't know much about him. But what I do know is he's not a lawyer in the state of Arizona. That means he didn't go to law school and pass the Arizona State Bar. You're thinking, wait, how is that possible? Well, under the Arizona State Constitution, you're allowed to run for justice of the piece as long as you have no felony convictions, and you're over 18 years of age. And speak English. So basically, it's a very low threshold. Now once a person's elected, they go through several weeks of classes, and then they come into court, and they judge people as guilt or innocence, and they also decide evidentiary issues, whether they're going to throw out evidence or keep it in, portion to dismiss or not dismiss. The problem is if you don't have a lawyer, they're going to have the prosecutor who's trained in the law who files written briefs and who argues the law, and you're going to be at a complete disadvantage. So that's why you want private counsel to come in so we can file our briefs, arguing your point of view and the law, and also cross-examine the officers. Now, once you get into the court, there's a certain order in which they take people. The first are the interpreter cases. That's people who don't speak English. The interpreter comes in, and they do the in-custody interpreter cases, then the out-of-custody interpreter cases, and then they go on to private lawyers. And that's where we can get you in front of the judge and get you out, hopefully in 30 to 45 minutes. If you don't have private counsel, if you have a PD, then that comes later, the public defender. And if you have no lawyer whatsoever, then they go alphabetical, and you might be waiting until the afternoon before you even get to see a judge, even though you're only going to see him for 30 seconds for your very first court date. So it is good to have private counsel. So many times, we can wave your presence and go there without you having to miss work or school. Now, if you or a loved one were charged with a misdemeanor crime and you're being sent over to the Manistee Justice Court, give us a call or go to our website, dmcantor.com. You're going to see our wins. We have over 130 jury trials in which every single charge was found not guilty, and they were a complete walk. We also have plenty of other cases, in fact, over 3,000 other cases in which we obtain victories of all different types. These were dismissed outright, people weren't charged at all. We reduced it, beat four of the five charges, things of that nature. So if you've been charged, give us a call. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care.