Def. pleads guilty to felony DWI for a ten-year term of probation and appeals from the court's pre-trial deanial of his motion to supress. Must the court allow the defendant to begin to serve his probation? May the court compel the defendant to begin to serve his probation? The court has presently stayed the imposition of the probation and set an appeal bond. The defendant does not want to make a new bond and threatens a mandamus to compel the court to allow him to begin to serve his probation with no appeal bond.

I don't think he can begin serving probation. A pending appeal generally prevents a judgment from achieving finality. I don't think you can legitimately revoke him while he is on appeal. We've had a thread about this before, I think. I admit that we have had judges order defendants to report during the pendency of the appeal, and that they often fulfill terms and conditions during pendency of appeal, but I don't think we've ever tried to revoke anyone.

Check out this thread:

Effect of appeal on probation

This question continues to pop up. There are several threads discussing the issue. Do a search with key words "probation", "appeal", "bond". Meanwhile, start with this thread.

And this: appeals and probation

Again, one of the advantages of membership in this community means never having to reinvent the wheel.