A Tennessee Felony Case From Arrest to Trial Date

1. Your Arrest and Your First Court Date

A Tennessee felony case that begins with an arrest begins in General Sessions Court, which is not the court where a felony is tried.

After the arrest you are taken before a General Sessions judge without unnecessary delay. The judge tells you the charge, that you have a right to a lawyer and an appointed one if you cannot afford it, that you have a right to say nothing, and that you have a right to a preliminary hearing.

On a felony you are not asked to plead here, and nobody decides your guilt. General Sessions is a screening station, not a destination, and everything below is how a case gets out of it.

Your lawyer's work now is your release and making sure nothing you say in the first days becomes evidence. Much of the damage in a felony case is done before anyone sees a courtroom.

2. The Preliminary Hearing

If your case started with an arrest or a criminal summons, you are generally entitled to a hearing in General Sessions Court before your case moves up to the grand jury.

That hearing is a screening, not a trial. The judge decides two things: whether a crime happened at all, and whether there is reason to believe you committed it. That is a far lower bar than the proof needed to convict.

It is usually set within about two weeks if you are in custody and about a month if you are out, counted from that first appearance. Those settings can be pushed back more than once, with no outside limit.

• What the State must put on: Tennessee is stricter here than many places. As a rule the State cannot build this hearing out of secondhand information; witnesses testify in person and your lawyer questions them. Narrow exceptions: proof of who owns property, and written expert reports such as a crime lab's. An objection to secondhand evidence wins only if that is all the State put on.
• What a win is worth: if the judge finds too little you are released, but the case is not over. Tennessee law lets the State take the same charge to a grand jury anyway.
• Giving it up: not entirely your call. The State can object, and if the judge finds good reason, the hearing goes forward anyway. Missing court also counts as giving it up — getting it back means proving to that court, within two weeks, that your absence was beyond your control, a high standard.
• The risk nobody expects: the hearing is recorded. If a State's witness later dies or cannot be found for trial, that recording can be played for your jury.

Your lawyer decides whether this hearing helps you or hands the State a recorded witness it might otherwise lose, cross-examines the State's witnesses, and argues your bail the same day.

3. The Bindover to the Grand Jury

When the judge finds enough to go forward, or when you give the hearing up, your case is bound over to the grand jury.

Bindover is the handoff. The General Sessions judge sends the case up, the papers move to the criminal court clerk, and the district attorney's office prepares a charge for the grand jury. It is a transfer, not a ruling.

Then, often, nothing visible happens. Tennessee sets no deadline for a grand jury to act on a bound-over case, and nothing caps the wait. A case can sit here for months, and silence does not mean the matter went away.

While the case sits between two courts your lawyer stays in contact with the prosecutor's office and preserves what will not survive the delay.

4. The Grand Jury

In Tennessee a criminal charge comes from a grand jury, and the grand jury meets in private, without you.

A Tennessee grand jury is thirteen people: a foreperson appointed by a judge for a two-year term, plus twelve jurors drawn in open court. Twelve votes are needed to charge, and the foreperson's vote counts toward the twelve — so on a full panel, a single dissent is all a person can survive.

The prosecutor may be there to advise the jurors and question witnesses, though not when the vote is taken, and nobody speaks for you. Jurors swear an oath of secrecy, and in most Tennessee counties nothing is recorded.

• No notice and no seat: you have no right to be told a grand jury is weighing your case, no right to be there, no right to send your lawyer in, no right to call witnesses.
• A door that is not a defense door: anyone claiming knowledge of a crime may ask to testify, but the foreperson and two jurors decide by majority and their decision is final. Testifying earns no protection from being charged.
• Different evidence rules: the strict rule keeping secondhand information out of a preliminary hearing does not follow the case here. Complaints about how a grand jury operated must generally be raised before trial or they are given up.

Nothing can be argued inside that room, so a lawyer's work is outside it — managing contact with investigators, preserving evidence that fades, and preparing you for a charge that arrives without warning.

5. The Indictment or Presentment

When the grand jury agrees to charge, it returns a paper called either an indictment or a presentment, and the two do the same thing.

People read meaning into which word appears. By habit, cases from General Sessions come back as indictments and cases taken straight to the grand jury come back as presentments — but Tennessee courts have handled cases that ran the other way, and the two carry identical consequences.

How you learn of it matters more. The clerk issues either an order for your arrest or a summons; for someone not in custody the arrest order is the default. Where the State goes to the grand jury first, with no arrest beforehand, there is no preliminary hearing at all — the General Sessions stage never happens.

When a charge lands your lawyer contacts the prosecutor's office about how you will be brought in, and starts reading what the State actually filed.

6. Your Arraignment in Criminal Court

Your first appearance in the court where a felony is actually tried is the arraignment.

Tennessee's rules say what an arraignment is: you get a copy of the charge, it is read to you or its substance stated, you are asked to plead, and it goes on the record. Ordinarily a not-guilty plea is entered. Sometimes you need not be there in person: your lawyer can appear with a signed waiver, or it can be done by video.

What the rules do not set is a deadline. No fixed number of days separates a charge from an arraignment in Tennessee. In one case a man was arraigned nearly a year after his indictment, days before trial, and the court found nothing wrong. Your date comes from that court's calendar and that district's local rules.

• A thirty-day clock: if you were arrested first and never got the preliminary hearing you were owed, the motion to send the case back down must be filed within thirty days of arraignment. Late ones have been refused. Even a win only sends the case back down for that hearing; the charge does not go away.
• A sixty-day clock: if the recording of a preliminary hearing is lost or inaudible, the motion for a new one must come within sixty days of arraignment.
• Your motion deadline: the judge may set it at the arraignment, and later motions are given up unless there is good cause.

At arraignment your lawyer enters the plea, calendars every deadline that starts that morning, and files what must be filed early — including any complaint about a preliminary hearing you never got.

7. The Road to a Trial Date

A trial date comes from the court's calendar, and Tennessee gives you a floor rather than a ceiling.

The floor is short: you cannot be tried until fourteen full days, not counting Sundays and legal holidays, after your arrest and the return of the charge. It can be given up, and does not apply if you plead guilty. Beyond that, nothing fixes when a Tennessee case must be tried.

Every judicial district must adopt local rules covering how cases are set for trial, how motions are handled, and the deadlines for plea negotiations. That last one is why a trial date is a deadline for decisions, not only the day a jury is picked.

Between arraignment and that date your lawyer litigates the motions, works the discovery, tests the State's proof, and explains your realistic options — while there is still time for the answer to matter.

About the Author

David G. Ridings is a Nashville criminal defense attorney, former police officer, and former prosecutor with nearly 40 years of experience in the Tennessee justice system. Known as “DrJudge,” he educates hundreds of thousands about their rights during police encounters.

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If you have been arrested in Tennessee, or think a grand jury may be weighing your case, the sequence above is already running. Don't talk to police, and don't wait for the next court date to find out what it means. Call Ridings Law Group at 1-888-DRJUDGE.

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