what exactly is pretrial confrence?

[zypher]

Hello again,

I was charged with possession of paraphernalia (a water pipe and a grinder) over a month ago (other than this my record is clean, this is the very first offense I have ever committed), my court date for that ticket was yesterday. So I arrived at court, all dressed up and everything. Basically, all the judge did was give me a pretrial conference in another month, where I would be able to talk to my prosecutor and hopefully have my charges decreased a bit.

But i'm very confused about all this, because of all the people I know that had marijuana/paraphernalia charges, none of them were assigned any pretrial conference, and all of them had to go to court just once, why was I assigned pretrial conference? and what exactly is this?

thank you!

 

[FlyingRon]

It's a place to work out the plea bargain (if their is going to be one), make any motions, or requests for further discovery, etc...

It may be that the DA requested it, or maybe the judge figured you were not prepared to go to trial (did he suggest you obtain counsel?).