I'm not sure if this is usual or not, but I just received the ticket today and the municipality holds court every Thursday, so I was slotted in for this week. I received the ticket less than 2 hours ago to be more precise.

I didn't mean "not appear" but I did mean there is sometimes the "waiver" option where you essentially plead guilty and pay the fine as opposed to showing up to court. I would only take this option if there was nothing that could really be done, as if the officer shows up I can not honestly plead "not guilty," I also feel I was out of bounds with the law, but maybe only in the sense of a moving traffic violation.

I am going to call an attorney first thing Monday, but I also run into a situation where if an attorney costs $1500 to plead me down, then I would be using a large chunk of my savings to get out of misdemeanor-which would be worth it if this is my only shot at pleading it down and it will be on my record forever, but will this stay on my record forever?

Thanks for the response flyingron