Plano Criminal Defense Lawyer

Which county is prosecuting your Plano case?

For nearly everyone arrested in Plano, the answer is Collin County. The city sits in Collin County, with only a small piece of far west Plano reaching into Denton County, so an offense committed inside the city is prosecuted by the Collin County District Attorney and routed to the courthouse complex at 2100 Bloomdale Road in McKinney, the county seat. Plano does not touch Dallas County; that county line sits south of the city limits, through Richardson. The distinction still matters in practice, because plenty of arrests that feel like Plano cases happen just across those lines: a stop in Richardson or on the Dallas side of the George Bush Turnpike is a Dallas County case at the Frank Crowley Courts Building, and an arrest in the far-west Denton sliver files in Denton. The prosecutors are different in each county, and so are the judges, the bail patterns, and the pretrial diversion programs. Kent Starr has practiced in all three county systems for three decades.

Plano Municipal Court and the county courts

Plano Municipal Court at 900 East 15th Street handles Class C misdemeanors and city-ordinance matters arising inside the city, most commonly public-intoxication allegations, theft-by-check matters, and code violations. The county keeps a presence in Plano too: the Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3, sits at the Collin County Sub-Courthouse at 920 East Park Boulevard and hears fine-only justice-court matters for this part of the county. Anything more serious, Class B and Class A misdemeanors and felonies, files with Collin County and is heard at the courthouse complex in McKinney: the County Courts at Law for most misdemeanors, the district courts for felonies. Kent Starr has practiced in those McKinney courts for three decades and knows the working rhythm of each docket.

White-collar and federal exposure in Plano

Plano’s economic profile shapes the case mix in a particular way. The city is home to the Toyota North America headquarters at Legacy West, the Frito-Lay corporate campus on Legacy Drive, the Capital One and JPMorgan Chase footprints in the same Legacy corridor, and dozens of other Fortune-500 satellite operations. White-collar exposure, wire fraud, mail fraud, embezzlement, healthcare-billing fraud, securities-related allegations, and the occasional Foreign Corrupt Practices Act referral, runs higher in Plano than in most surrounding cities. Many of these matters move into the Eastern District of Texas as federal criminal cases, where Kent’s Denver LL.M. in taxation and his Oxford background become directly relevant.

Traffic stops on the Dallas North Tollway and US-75

The volume side of the practice in Plano is driven by traffic. The Dallas North Tollway, Central Expressway (US-75), and FM-544 form a high-density commuter grid, and Plano PD plus DPS run consistent enforcement along all three. Kent represents Plano residents and commuters facing DWI defense in Plano, drug-possession and distribution charges arising from highway stops, and the parole and probation violation matters that often follow a new arrest. The firm also handles a steady volume of domestic violence allegations in the Plano area, where the no-contact conditions attached at magistration often matter as much as the charge itself.

Three things to know if you have just been charged in Plano

Three details are worth knowing if you have just been charged in Plano. First: booking for county-level Plano arrests runs through the Collin County Detention Facility on Community Avenue in McKinney, sometimes after a short hold in the city’s own holding facility, and that is where a magistrate reviews the arrest and sets bond, usually within the first day or two. Second: the Collin County District Attorney’s pretrial diversion programs have their own eligibility rules, and the window to position a case for them is early, before the first decisions get made without you. Third: Plano PD’s body-worn-camera and dash-camera footage practices have improved meaningfully over the last several years, and a careful evidentiary review at the front of a case often surfaces facts that were not in the offense report.

Working with Kent on a Plano case

Kent runs Starr Law, P.C. as a solo practitioner. When clients meet at the McKinney office at 5900 S Lake Forest Dr, Suite 200, in McKinney, the county seat, they meet with Kent, and Kent is the lawyer who handles the case from consultation through trial. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese in addition to English, offers free, confidential initial consultations, and represents clients throughout Collin, Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, Rockwall, Kaufman, Ellis, Johnson, and Parker Counties. Reading the firm’s client reviews is the most honest portrait of the work.

Other Plano charges Kent defends

Beyond the matters above, Kent defends the full range of Collin County charges for Plano clients, including sex crimes, juvenile cases, theft and property crimes, weapons charges, murder and homicide, and reckless driving, evading, and warrant defense. Because Plano’s cases file in Collin County, the firm’s Collin County criminal defense attorney guide explains how they move through the McKinney courts, and eligible dispositions may later qualify for expunction or an order of nondisclosure.

If you have been charged with an offense in Plano, or just across the county line in Richardson or Dallas, call (214) 982-1408 for a free consultation with Kent.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is evaluated on its own facts.

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