What does Scottsdale City Court Do?

Scottsdale City Court handles any tickets issued by the Scottsdale City Police. Scottsdale City Court also handles misdemeanor traffic cases, other misdemeanor criminal cases, code violation cases, and protective orders.

We frequently represent clients with criminal speeding tickets in Scottsdale City Court. Scottsdale City Court processes over 80,000 cases, 75% of which are civil traffic cases – that’s over 60,000 civil traffic cases a year. And that doesn’t even include all of the victimless criminal traffic cases like criminal speeding, driving on a suspended license, and many others.

We are not privy to the specifics of the civil traffic cases Scottsdale City Court processes, but a safe guess is the vast majority of those 60,000+ civil traffic cases are photo enforcement cases.

Many of our clients live locally, but a lot of the drivers we help live out-of-state and received their Scottsdale traffic ticket while they were visiting Scottsdale on vacation or for a business conference. It is not unusual for a driver to receive a photo enforcement ticket at the same location just minutes apart. This is typically a driver who is not familiar with Scottsdale and who is lost, and drives up and down the road intent on finding their destination, but unaware of Scottsdale’s many photo enforcement devices.

Does the driver need to appear in Scottsdale City Court after they receive a ticket?

For a photo enforcement ticket, the defendant typically does not need to ever appear in court; an attorney can appear for them. For criminal traffic tickets, we can typically either appear in court for our clients or arrange for an appearance by telephone. The one exception is for a trial. For a trial, the defendant needs to be present.

If you have received a traffic ticket in Scottsdale, give us a call, and pick our brains about what to expect with photo radar tickets and criminal speeding tickets in Scottsdale City Court. Even if you don’t hire us, you we will give you good information to help you make an informed decision.

Scottsdale Court Process – Criminal Cases

Scottsdale runs things a little differently than most other courts. For a criminal case, there are potentially 5 court dates:

You can click on the links above to read more. The case management conference and trial readiness conference are essentially pretrial conferences, but they have different names to indicate where the case is in the process. Scottsdale will let an attorney appear for the defendant at the pretrial conference and case management conference, but will generally require that the defendant appears for the trial readiness conference. If no agreement is reached by the trial readiness conference, then the case will be set for a trial. A change of plea hearing can occur anywhere along the way once an agreement is reached.

Scottsdale City Court
3700 N. 75th Street
Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Hours:

M-F  8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Phone: 480-312-2442

Fax: 480-312-2764

Website: https://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/court