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Spoilery question
For your viewing enjoyment, a White Collar fanart I ran across on Tumblr. SO CUTE. (No spoilers.)
I also have a White Collar-related legal question for the flist. I may, um, be thinking about writing tags for 4x16, and there's something I'm wondering about. This is quite spoilery for the end of Season Four, so the question itself is under the cut.
I'm thinking about how to handle Peter's situation post-arrest.
As I understand it, a person is not put in prison until they're convicted and sentenced, and it will probably take months or even years for the trial to happen. So in the meantime ... what happens to him? Some defendants are released on bail, and I can't figure out if Peter is a good candidate for this or not. His background, as an FBI agent with no criminal history, seems like it would work in his favor, but the crime is so violent and high-profile that I'm not sure. (Peter being released on bail and a tracking anklet is an entertaining possibility ...)
Otherwise, he would be held until the trial ... where? In a local jail? A special pretrial holding facility? A restricted section of a general prison? Google is giving me the impression that defendants charged with federal crimes (and killing a US Congressperson would almost certainly qualify) are held in the custody of the US Marshals at special facilities, but I don't know if that happens in all states and to all such defendants, or just sometimes and in some places.
(Sadly this probably means that Peter and Neal being in prison together is unlikely to happen; Peter would need to be sentenced, and would probably be incarcerated somewhere separate from Neal in any case, since Neal's a nonviolent offender and Peter isn't. Not that there's any reason that one couldn't handwave to get it to that point. :D We are writing fan fiction, after all, not true life crime novels.)
It's strangely difficult to find reliable information on this, though. There's lots on the Internet about prisons, and I am pretty sure that people awaiting trial on local crimes are held in local jails (I remember once being told the difference between a jail and a prison is that a jail is for people who aren't sentenced yet), but that's for, say, shoplifting or DUI; I'm not sure about a crime like murder.
Thoughts? Does anyone know how that part of it works?
I also have a White Collar-related legal question for the flist. I may, um, be thinking about writing tags for 4x16, and there's something I'm wondering about. This is quite spoilery for the end of Season Four, so the question itself is under the cut.
I'm thinking about how to handle Peter's situation post-arrest.
As I understand it, a person is not put in prison until they're convicted and sentenced, and it will probably take months or even years for the trial to happen. So in the meantime ... what happens to him? Some defendants are released on bail, and I can't figure out if Peter is a good candidate for this or not. His background, as an FBI agent with no criminal history, seems like it would work in his favor, but the crime is so violent and high-profile that I'm not sure. (Peter being released on bail and a tracking anklet is an entertaining possibility ...)
Otherwise, he would be held until the trial ... where? In a local jail? A special pretrial holding facility? A restricted section of a general prison? Google is giving me the impression that defendants charged with federal crimes (and killing a US Congressperson would almost certainly qualify) are held in the custody of the US Marshals at special facilities, but I don't know if that happens in all states and to all such defendants, or just sometimes and in some places.
(Sadly this probably means that Peter and Neal being in prison together is unlikely to happen; Peter would need to be sentenced, and would probably be incarcerated somewhere separate from Neal in any case, since Neal's a nonviolent offender and Peter isn't. Not that there's any reason that one couldn't handwave to get it to that point. :D We are writing fan fiction, after all, not true life crime novels.)
It's strangely difficult to find reliable information on this, though. There's lots on the Internet about prisons, and I am pretty sure that people awaiting trial on local crimes are held in local jails (I remember once being told the difference between a jail and a prison is that a jail is for people who aren't sentenced yet), but that's for, say, shoplifting or DUI; I'm not sure about a crime like murder.
Thoughts? Does anyone know how that part of it works?