Q: Is there a time limit to go to court? I was arrested in May2020 Henderson County Texas

A: Yes, the statute of limitations provides a deadline for the State to file a criminal case. This time period varies depending on the charge, but the minimum for felony cases is 3 years from the date of offense. Call your attorney. Good luck.

A: You didn't say what the dangerous drug or controlled substance was and that matters with respect to the statute of limitations. It seems that you're talking about some kind of "powder drug" like methamphetamine or cocaine or possibly heroin. Whatever the drug was, the prosecutor in your county will not take your case to the grand jury to ask for an indictment until he/she gets a report from whichever drug-testing, forensics laboratory they sent the substance to. DPS has 13 labs, I think, around the state which analyse substances submitted to them for analysis. Some counties send their drug evidence to private labs, but either way, the round-trip from arresting agency (e.g., Dallas Police Department) to the testing facility and back to the submitting agency can take longer than a year in some (not so rare as you might think) cases. My experience is that at the present time, the usual "turn-around time" in drug cases is 6-8 months.

A cynical person might think the State of Texas engages in a purposeful delaying game in order to wear down people charged with drug offenses. Believe me when I tell you this does wear people out to such a degree that when their cases finally do come to court, again, say 9 months to a year after they were arrested, many defendants just want to plead out and get their probation. I think numbers can be made to say anything you want to say, but probably the great majority (well over 70%, my guess) of people in prison originally took probation, and whoops, all of a sudden they're in prison doing hard time.

So you have a long, tough road ahead of you. The way to do it correctly is to get a lawyer early. If you don't already have a lawyer working for you six (6) months after your arrest, you're just lining up for the bus to Huntsville, by which I mean prison. A good lawyer will get you busy doing things that will help you win your case at trial and/or help mitigate any punishment you might get. The fact that you're writing here for answers indicates you haven't hired a lawyer yet. If that's the case, what the heck are you doing? If you knew you had cancer, would you wait 6 months before you went to see a doctor?

If you do have a lawyer, you should be asking him/her this question. Think about it this way. In criminal cases, lawyers almost never charge by the hour. Rather they set a fee for the entire case. This means you should have access to your lawyer regularly and without being charged for their time. You should be talking to your lawyer about your case and getting ready for trial every week. This is the way to win a criminal case, not by sitting around wondering about time limits the state has to comply with. Believe me, those time limits work against you, not for you... UNLESS you use this incredibly strung-out time to work on winning your case.

Even if you think you probably won't actually go to trial, you and your lawyer should be preparing to do just that so that the prosecutor will notice you don't seem to be lining up to go to prison by way of probation like a good little defendant.

Pardon my rant, but the reason we imprison more citizens (per capita) than Red China, North Korea or Russia is that most criminal defendants believe they'll get a fair shake from the system because they have children to feed, or parents to care for, or because at 61, they've never been in trouble before. If you can't afford a lawyer, get the court to appoint you one. Time's a 'wastin', young feller. More precisely put, you're wasting time which could be spent getting ready to win.

Again, please excuse me for jumping all over you. There are just too many things you could and should be doing right now(!) to help yourself. They will not get done unless you, with a lawyer's direction, do them.