Don’t Let a Criminal Charge Ruin Your Life

When we sit down with our clients as we did just yesterday, we talk to them and we tell them to ask questions. Ask about our qualifications. We have gone to trial numerous times in criminal matters. We have experience in lowly misdemeanors to high felonies. Really what you need to do is focus on someone who handles these types of cases, who has the experience to handle these types of cases, and the experience to handle your particular case and your particular set of facts and circumstances, someone that has a proven track record, someone who has that experience in these local courtrooms. These courtrooms haven’t really changed much in the past 20 years so having been familiar with the process and the players that are all involved really gives an experienced attorney a leg up which will ultimately help the person accused of a crime to defend themselves. We think first and foremost, it’s talk to the attorney, see if they have the experience that you need for your particular case. If you have any questions about our qualifications or the cases that we handle, please contact our firm.

If you’ve been told that you have a warrant for your arrest here in Orlando, Florida, what we would suggest to do is something that we’ve advised clients as recently as a few weeks ago. Poor young man came into our office, he was very worried about it. He said he found out that he had an arrest warrant out there and he didn’t know exactly what to do. Of course, this is a scary experience because you don’t know. Maybe you get pulled over for a broken taillight or for some other relatively minor thing and you’re hauled off to jail for some reason unknown to you.

What we would suggest and what we suggested to our client was that if you know you have a warrant out for your arrest, the first thing you need to do is consult with and hire an attorney that’s knowledgeable in these types of matters. A criminal defense attorney, such as the Victory law firm, the attorneys we have here will know exactly what to do. We’ve dealt with this many times over our career. What happens is let’s say you have the warrant out for your arrest, and you don’t do anything. You don’t consult with an attorney. You just go about your business. One day, you’re out and about and you start talking to an officer and it’s all seemingly nice conversation. Next thing you know, they start asking questions. They run your name and they find out there’s a warrant for your arrest. You could be taken into jail at that moment. You may not have any idea what it’s for, which can be a very scary situation. You could be out of state. You could be anywhere where it would be a lot more trouble than having consulted with an attorney.

The benefits of consulting and retaining an attorney to take care of that situation is you can hire an attorney. What we’ve done in the past is you can file your notice of appearance you enter as the attorney on record on that case and then you file a motion with the court. We can file a simple motion with the court. We appear together. We go with you and we say our client is here. We have a warrant. We’d like to enter our appearance. We’d like to say we know that the warrant is here. We have bail set up. We can make that process seamless, whereas if you don’t have an attorney, you could run into some real big problems if you don’t get that taken care of.

In the past, we’ve never had a situation where that didn’t work for us and the client has been happy. They stay free. We have the ability to investigate the case and continue representing the case in the best way possible. We would highly suggest getting with an attorney as soon as you find out that there’s a warrant out for your arrest. If you have any other questions about warrants, or capias as they’re otherwise known, or bondsmen, please contact our office so that we can help you through the process.

Many times, we get clients who come in who want to retain our services to represent them in a criminal case here in Orlando, Florida. One of their main questions is We’ve posted bail. We’ve paid the bail bondsman. I got released. Do I have to go back to court? Do I have to do anything else after I post that bail? The answer is yes. Once you post your bail and you get out of jail, you have an obligation to make sure that you appear for all court appearances that are ordered by the court. If you do not, there’s a possibility that you could relinquish that bail and lose out on that money and also you will be put back in jail. The short quick concise answer is, yes, you do have to appear back in court and we would advise you to do that because there are some adverse consequences if you fail to cooperate with the guidelines that are set upon your release after you post that bail. If you have any other more detailed questions about what your next steps are after you’ve been released from jail and bail, please call our office so we can help you through this process.