Judges in County or Supreme Courts normally schedule a sentence hearing on a different day to when the plea hearing was heard. Normally, a judge would want to carefully examine all evidence and details of the case then reflect on what penalty is appropriate for the offence.
A date for the sentencing hearing will be announced by the end of the plea hearing. If the date and time have not been finalised yet, the accused gets remanded in custody to a date to be fixed. Usually, the defence lawyers are contacted by the court as soon as the judge has come up with a schedule for when the sentence will occur.
During the sentence hearing, judges may clarify certain issues that came up only after the plea hearing. They may have received certain reports that need some explanation from the defence. Generally though, no further submissions are made during the sentence hearing.
