OK, any appeal on a speeding ticket or whatnot from a JP or municipal court is tried de novo in the County Courts. What my question is is: What procedures are we using? The procedures at the lower levels, or the procedures at the county court levels? Specifically:

1) Is is a bifurcated trial or not (at JP it isn't)?

2) Can a Defendant waive a jury trial without the State's consent (at JP they can)?

I'm sure there are other situations that I haven't thought of.

Is there any authority on this subject? What do you guys do in other jurisdictions?

1. Not all appeals are de novo - only the ones from courts that are not of record (if a municipal court is a court of record, it is treated as a regular appeal).

2. My experience has been that the trials are not bifurcated, but are handled exactly the way they would be at the muni/JP level.

3. On a traffic/other class C case, I never really worried whether the defendant wanted to waive a jury or not, because frankly, (1) it was still a class C, and (2) not that many actually went to trial, and those that did at the county court level usually requested juries.

We treat them the same way we'd treat any other trial in county court. It's bifurcated and both sides have to waive a jury. (Not that we aren't generally very willing to do so. ) I figure the statute sets it up as a whole new trial in county court, so they must want us to use county court procedures.

I seem to recall an OAG opinion on petitions for expunction where the defendant either appeals a Class "C" to County Court or has a case reduced to a "C" misdemeanor, takes a deferred adjudication in County Court, and then seeks an expunction under Art. 45.051(e). The expunction should be denied because Chapter 45 only applied to proceeding in Justice and Municipal Courts. That would argue that on appeal to County Court you proceed as you would ordinarily in County Court.