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Welcome to Beat the Prosecution with your host, Jonathan Katz, a Fairfax Criminal Defense and DWI lawyer. This episode of our podcast is a re-recording of a video from our YouTube channel linked at beatheprosecution.com. For inf for more information, you may contact us at 703-383-1100 or send us an email at infobeatheprosecution.com or give us a text at 571-406-7268. Now your host of Beat the Prosecution, Northern Criminal Lawyer, John Katz.

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I'm Shawnee Katz with KatzJustice.com, headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, in Northern Virginia. My last video focused on assault. The related issue right now is protective orders. If you get charged with assaulting your significant other who you live with, expect there to be an emergency protective order that goes along with it often that says that for approximately a three-day period you can't have any contact with your significant other. That means your wife, your husband, your girlfriend, your boyfriend who you live with. It might add your children on there. If you violate that, that's a misdemeanor. It's jailable. Don't do it. If you want to seek a modification of that, check with a lawyer. If your significant other or whoever else you live with claims that you assaulted them and they want to extend that protective order, they can go to court and seek a preliminary protective order that goes on for a longer period of time and where there's a hearing later on, a few weeks later, that can be contested. You want to hire a lawyer for that. Because, as I said, any finding in criminal court of a violation of a protective order, that's a jailable offense. You don't want that to happen. Now, do you want the protective order hearing to be before or after the parallel assault trial if there's an assault trial that goes along similar and related to it? Generally, you want the protective order not to be before the assault trial. Why? If you have the protective order trial before the assault trial, and if you testify at the protective order trial, that testimony can be used against you at your criminal trial. You have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent under the United States Constitution. And so you want to be careful about any testimony given court. And certainly, if you're going to testify in court and you have a pending related criminal case against you, you want to have a lawyer. You want to have a good lawyer, you want to have a qualified lawyer, you want to have a lawyer who understands the risks of testifying in court at a protective order hearing before the assault trial ever takes place. But if the protective order hearing is going to be continued past the date of the assault trial, usually a judge is not going to be agreeable to doing that without extending that protective order, the preliminary protective order, which means during this entire time that you're waiting for the final protective order hearing, there is this protective order against you, and if you're ever found in violation of it, you can go to jail, or at least it's a jailable offense, and it's a conviction. So it's a very sensitive matter. You want to get a lawyer anytime you're charged with assault, anytime you're charged with a jailable offense, anytime there's a protective order case against you.

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Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email. Info at be the prosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.