Welcome back everybody to Now We Defend podcast. Uh this is our second podcast. We’re really excited to uh be doing it. And we uh would like to start kind of transitioning into a topic that we started with uh initially on our first episode, which was what happens when you get charged with a crime. Um, so we talked a lot about misdemeanors and how to set these cases up and how to really be most effective in getting a good result ultimately by beginning the right way. Um, now we’d like to talk a little bit more about a more serious topic, which would be what happens if you get charged with a felony. Uh, felonies come in many different types of crimes. Uh, even some less serious crimes can actually aggregate to felony level charges. things like retail thefts, DUIs, depending on uh the aggregation of those charges and whether or not they’re second, third, fourth offenses. So, the uh the process for when you get charged with a felony is actually quite different. There’s a number of different ways uh that that starts, and we’re going to walk you through how to handle that most appropriately and uh get the best bang for your buck in the outcome of the case from the very beginning. I’m going to allow everybody to introduce themselves again so you get familiar with everybody. So, I’ll turn it over to Tim and Justin. Go ahead, guys. My name is Tim Long, Justin Baron. All right. And again, as a reminder, guys, we are uh three former prosecutors and we now defend, hence our awesome name, Now We Defend. All right. Uh I’ll start uh I’ll kick it over to uh you Justin. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about um you hear through the grape vine or you know you’re getting charged with a felony crime. What do you do? This is a great topic for today because right before we came on I got a call from uh an officer regarding a former client of mine that they are going to be filing felony charges on. Uh and those charges are coming. They haven’t been filed yet. However, he essentially was reaching out to set up a time to turn him in uh on the warrant rather than issuing an arrest warrant. So, I guess we’ll start there. uh when you are charged with with certain felonies um or really any felony, they can issue a warrant to uh arrest you and come and pick you up and uh essentially at that point they’ll take you in front of a judge to be arraigned or we do what’s called an arrest by appointment uh where we actually schedule a time with the officer and the judge to essentially again turn our client in. Uh and usually that ends up working out better for them in terms of bail uh and ultimately starting the process on the right foot. Yeah. Great. Great. How what happens though like in your case there, how does your client even know that they have this potential felony warrant, right? Because obviously your client reached out to you, they knew this was coming and they wanted to get ahead of it. That’s why you reach out to an attorney. But a lot of times people might get charged with a crime and they don’t even know it’s out there. So what kind of happens in the justice process to trigger that in someone’s mind, right? Obviously if you get arrested, right? But that means you’re not doing an arrest by appointment, then you’re actually arrested, right? So how does someone find out they might be getting charged with felony? So I think there’s a number of ways. Uh I think ultimately for the most part if someone goes out and commits a crime, they know that there may be some type of charges coming and they’ll either check the uh U.JS JS portal, the public docket sheets to see if anything’s been filed. Um, in this case specifically today, the officer had reached out to my client prior to him calling me. Um, so I think there’s a number of ways other than actually being arrested. Again, you can check the public docket sheets, an officer can reach out to you. U, maybe you’re on probation um, and pick up new charges and your probation officer calls you. Uh, you know, there’s a number of ways I think that that ultimately can be brought to a person’s attention. Yeah, absolutely. Um, it’s kind of like uh if you’re not completely in not connected with what’s going on in your life, you’re going to know you’re going to be charged with a felony crime. I mean, that’s that’s something that, you know, you have to be kind of living in a cave not to realize that. So, there’s a lot of different ways that can happen. But, um, Tim, if, uh, as Justin was just kind of describing that, in the event that, uh, somebody knows they’re getting charged with a felony crime, what if you, uh, you know, were their friend or family member or something like that and you they came to you for advice, what should I do next? What would you recommend? Um, well, get an attorney. Yeah, speak. Contact an attorney immediately. Yeah, Justin’s right because I think a lot of times people don’t realize that officers in this I think in the modern era are they’re trying to reach out to people in advance. So they’re trying to give you the courtesy of letting you know, hey, there’s a warrant for there’s a warrant out for your arrest. Now, um so most of the time they are trying to do that. I don’t mean to interrupt you, but sometimes you are actually working an investigation before you’re ever charged with a felony. And that gets to Justin’s point of, hey, if we’re already working with the police, we’re already working the pre-investigatory stage or the investigatory stage before they’re charged, right? We actually are already involved with the police, right? And then the police are far more likely to work with us and not come out and bust your door down and pull you out of work or home and, you know, work with us and do the arrest by appointment. So tell me about that. The arrest by appointment, what’s that look like? Yeah. So, the arrest by appointment, as you’ve said, is when the warrant is active and the officer usually is extending a courtesy to either the attorney if they know there’s an attorney involved or to the person themselves and they will reach out and say, “Hey, you got this warrant. You need to come and turn yourself in.” And so, usually what we do is we call the magistrate, we set up an appointment for them to come in because at that point procedurally, they have to be arraigned on that charge. And that is the first occasion where they would go in front of a judge. This is different from what we talked about last time because usually for misdemeanor crimes, those go out by summons. And so the first time you interact with a judges at the prelim. In this case though, you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest, the first time you interact with a judge is going to be when you’re brought in on that warrant and they’re going to set bail on you at that time. Yeah. And that gets into a really important part of what we want to talk about today, which is is bail. That’s a really scary word for a lot of people, especially ones that haven’t been in trouble before. Um, a lot of times I think what people see on TV when they hear the word bail is, “Oh, well that means I go to jail and I have to pay money to get out of jail.” Um, in fact, pretty much everybody that I meet with thinks that’s what bail is. And that is one type of bail. don’t get me wrong, but there are other types of bail that uh I think are a lot of times more applicable uh and can uh be far more beneficial for the individual. So, I mean, I always try to tell my clients in these initial meetings when we’re talking about bail and what that looks like is try to put their mind at ease a little bit and say, “Hey, listen, this could happen, but you know, we’re involved. We’re doing this the right way, and there are ways to get bail positions that are a lot different than I have to go to jail, you know, and pay money to get out of jail.” Um, so tell me a little bit about the types of bail. Uh, Justin, I’ll kick it to you. Go ahead. So I think the first one we’ll start with the lowest RO released on your own recgnizance. Uh, I think and what is recgnissance mean? A lot. It’s a weird essentially just released to yourself, right? Um, you’re your own shity. There’s no monetary amount placed on you essentially for, you know, lower crimes uh or less serious crimes. Uh, I think a lot of first offense DUIs as long as there was no accident or, you know, uh, aggravating circumstances. Uh, summary, well, not summary offenses, but low-level misdemeanor with summary offenses. Um, and then we have, uh, unsecured bail. Uh, unsecured bail means that there is a monetary amount placed essentially over you. Uh, however, as long as you show up to court and abide by the bail conditions, you know, don’t receive any new charges, you’ll never owe any of that money. So, it’s it’s not it’s almost like nonmonetary, but it’s monetary in the sense that it kind of I always describe it as it it hangs over your head as like an anvil, right? Yes. You never have to pay that money if that anvil never falls down. But if you violate your bail conditions, you’re paying that bail in full or you become responsible for it. So, it’s a pretty heavy anvil that could fall. And um that’s an important part of why bail conditions matter, right? So, it’s not only just money, it’s also like what do I actually have to do with this now? Right. So, tell me about that a little bit. Yeah. And I think with the unsecured bail, like you mentioned, most of the time there’s going to be some type of other bail conditions placed on you, whether that’s supervised bail, meaning you have to report to adult probation for pre-trial uh services or supervision. um depending on, you know, second offense DUIs. Here in York County, uh as well as other counties, they have uh different things or excuse me, different programs. Here in York, it’s target 25. Um I think in it’s drop. Um so essentially, they’ll place you on uh again a non-monetary unsecured amount of bail with supervised conditions and put you on an ankle monitor, alcohol monitor, etc. Yeah. Yeah. That’s this this point of uh target 25 bail, drop bail, things that these counties have specifically as it relates to DUI is a very distinct and unique thing actually to this area. Um in fact, I I’m not even sure if even other states are doing this yet. maybe in some areas, but uh specifically to our area, York, Lancaster, Dolphin, uh Chambersburg, well that’s Franklin County, um you know, Adams County, those types of counties. The bail is handled differently by each county individually, right? It’s not always the same and they have different distinct things within the county. And I do want to unpack that. But before we unpack that, let’s talk about just supervised bail, right? We tal the target 25 bail conditions are part of supervised bail, but they’re a distinct and unique part of a type of supervised bail. Um, tell me about uh and Tim, let’s let’s go to you here. Uh, tell me about like just generally supervised bail. What does that mean and what can be part of supervised bail and why do judges give supervised bail? So, supervised bail, the way to think about it is it’s basically probation before you’re convicted. um it’s a little less maybe invasive than actual probation can be um because you’re not necessarily subject to like random searches or things like that. Um but you are going to have to regularly report into a probation officer. You are going to potentially have to check in with them and go through drug testing. It’s really going to be up to the discretion of the supervising agent what is required to keep you on track. And the check-ins with probation, they’re not always in person, right? There’s different ways that you can do that. So, like you said, you’re on probation kind of while you’re on bail, but that doesn’t mean that you’re reporting on a always. It it could, but it doesn’t mean that you’re always like, “Oh, I got to go every week and meet with my PO or anything like that.” It could mean a different type of reporting or a check-in, right? So, what’s that mean? I think that the the kind of offense, the facts of the case are going to dictate that too because the probation officer is going to be aware if if your case involves sort of like aggravating facts like there were firearms involved or there was kind of acts of violence or there was flight involved in your in your charge, that’s going to escalate their posture and it’s going to cause them to be a little more active in their supervision with you. Um, but when you get to a certain point with low-level offenses, like you said, it could just be checking in over the phone. It could be video. They do Zoom, I think, meetings now. Um, yeah. Online, I think, is an option. Yeah. Could it could also be like no check-ins at all. You do an initial intake with them, and as long as you’re staying out of trouble, they’re not reallyounding you. Right. Um. Right. Like you said, there’s like different levels of supervised bail, right? And I think a lot of that is depending on kind of what the judge dictates in their specific conditions and also just the nature of the crime that is alleged against you um will dictate how they handle supervised bail. Um, so along with having to check in with a PO, there are also things that a judge can make a condition of your bail and make you do things right. And this would be to probably either protect yourself or maybe the community or start treating some of the aspects that the court identifies as at issue in the beginning, right? So, um, what types of things could a judge put on your actual conditions? Justin, go ahead. So, like we talked about with the DUI, specifically target 25, um the alcohol monitor, uh random drug testing, um drug and alcohol evaluation if if controlled substances or alcohol are at issue or may have led to uh the ultimate charges being filed, the underlying conditions, mental health evaluations or assessments, competency evaluations. uh really like you said there’s a number of things that they can impose uh to not only help and protect the person that is charged but also the community at large which is a very important part of bail. The list is probably shorter to say what can’t they put what can’t do pretty anything that’s reasonably designed to safeguard the public and ensure that you’re going to be compliant and that you’re going to show up to court. Yeah. Some counties as a standard condition for bail will say maintain full-time employment. I think they’re they’re like Lebanon County I think does that. There can also be contact provisions, right? Who you can and can’t have contact with if you have a victim, right? Um and they are pretty strict about those specifically. Uh and if they find out that you’re having an appropriate contact where you’re not allowed to. Uh it’s important to understand that every single one of these bail conditions, if you don’t comply with it, they can violate you. And that means you do go down to the prison and you do sit there and they can revoke your bail. Um, and then they could even set no bail at that point because you violated your conditions. Or they could up it. Then it could become possibly monetary where you actually have to pay money and have even further conditions, things like that. I actually uh had a situation uh excuse me, kind of recently where um I had a client who got to me kind of like late and he was he didn’t have an attorney when he first got charged and he ended up getting picked up on the warrant, you know, like we were talking about earlier, ended up getting arrested, ended up, you know, not getting a good bail position because he went before the judge without counsel. Uh didn’t really know quite how to advocate for himself and what was important. the judge did lock him up uh and actually uh set not only an extremely high bail, he had two cases, but also denied his bail uh in a case uh in the other case. So, I had to kind of once I did get involved, his family called me uh quickly engage uh because obviously I have a client who’s literally staying in jail and not being able to do anything and nobody is moving on their case. So, I had to intervene quite quickly and file a motion to have bail conditions reviewed and set. Um and in that case uh you know the judge did come up with a number of different conditions which the judge felt were appropriate to protect society and my client because there was some issues involving my client. It involved it involved evaluations both drug and alcohol mental health. It involved a preclusion on possession of firearms. We didn’t talk about that yet. Right. The judge can actually kind of at least temporarily take away your second amendment right. Not only that, but I mean they can they can forfeit the existing firearms you have too, right? They can have Yeah, exactly. I mean that’s a higher bar that they have. There’s usually more procedure that they have to go through to do that, but they can and I’ve seen that done where they will they will go through the process to actually confiscate firearms from you. Yeah. And when they do that, the the sheriff’s department is usually tasked with actually checking and maybe even taking them from your home uh and possibly storing them. Um, so yeah, I mean your your your rights are directly affected based upon these orders, but these were the only conditions that a judge in in this case was willing to feel safe releasing this individual from prison, right, with these kind of overarching things in place that would protect what the judge felt was himself and society. So, um, yeah, it it was a big deal, but luckily we were able to get my client out, uh, and we were able to, uh, work on these things. And the things that the judge was ordering my client to do were things I was going to have my client do anyway. Right. Right. Because as we were talking about in our last episode, we need to start putting mitigated factors into place right out of the gate. Timing, timing, timing. It is so important, right? So doing things like getting evaluated, getting into treatment, not only is it probably part of these bail conditions in certain cases, but we’re going to do them anyways. So in a way, it’s it’s not even that bad for the individual, right? That’s what I tell people for drop and pre-trial supervision is that as long as you’re not messing up and doing what you’re supposed to be doing, that actually looks good for you. Yeah. It helps. Absolutely. It helps you. It helps get a good outcome. Yeah. You Justin, you want to add something? Yeah. I was just going to add that when I’m meeting with people um especially when they’re incarcerated and we’re looking to uh either have their bail modified to a lesser amount so they can post or something unsecured with other conditions. I always tell them, you know, your best bet uh not only to help you in your case, but also, you know, address the underlying issues is submit to whatever the court feels is appropriate and and comply with it. Because like you said, we’re going to have you do most of that anyway. But also, if you go in there and essentially tell the judge, you know, I’m willing to abide by whatever conditions you feel is appropriate, not only for the protection of myself, but also the public. you know, you want to you want to say that because again, it not only makes you look good in front of the court and that you’re willing to uh submit to these things and comply in order to help yourself uh with any issues that you may have been struggling with, but again, also protect the public. And like Tim said, you know, if you do those things and comply, it really does help you in the long run. Just like we said last time, it it it doesn’t it shows that you don’t need a heavy hand in sentencing if you’re compliant. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. It’s huge on the back end, right? And it’s hard to, I think, sometimes for people to envision that, right? In the beginning of my case, in the very, why do I have to do all this stuff right now, right? Why, well, 6 months from now, we want to be able to say, hey, look at how we fixed this judge. Look at how we fixed this prosecutor. You don’t need to force this down my throat. It’s done. And you’re going to get a way better outcome. So, that’s why again, timing, it matters. Being proactive is huge in these cases. And one thing I wanted to touch on too is sometimes I think people think that by like you said Justin like submitting to what is being asked of you right on bail or even showing that you’re willing and wanting to do this this this get this help or do this counseling or whatever they’re asking is somehow showing saying to the judge I’m guilty of the crime. I admit I did this because I’m trying to get help. This is kind of a misnomer and I know we’ve talked a lot about, you know, podcasts of the future and we’re going to talk about myths and things like that and we’ll get to those, but this is a big one that kind of hits right here, right? That is not the case. It is just not the case. I mean, we were, again, we are all former prosecutors. We’ve literally been on the other side of this and had defendants that we are prosecuting for very serious crimes literally doing these types of things. And I never once as a prosecutor thought to myself, “Oh, this guy, he he he’s getting help, so he’s guilty and and therefore I’m going to give him a worse sentence.” Right? Never. There’s stuff we say and do in in trials, and then there’s stuff we say and do in plea negotiations. I have had frequent conversations with defense attorneys where I’m saying they’re asking for certain offers or whatever. Um, and I’ve even had these conversations as a defense attorney where I’m asking for certain things and the prosecutor’s bringing up certain things. And we both know none of that’s coming in at trial. You can bring up my client’s background history, his prior record. That stuff a lot of times is not coming in, but it is relevant when it comes to plea negotiations. So, we say and do stuff and I think prosecutors, defense attorneys, we can separate the two. You can tell me your guys engaging with treatment. You can tell me that there was a dispute between, you know, parties. You can tell me that there were family dynamics going on. You can tell me all that and as a prosecutor or defense attorney, I can separate that from facts that I would need to include in my case and chief at trial. And there’s there’s really no bar on that negotiation aspect, right? Like when we’re having those kind of behind the scenes, closed door like negotiation meetings with prosecutors, we’re not holding back. like we are in there literally trying to go over everything that would mitigate this for our client full well knowing that a lot of that isn’t going to come in if we have to go to trial. I think a good way to describe it is the difference between the negotiation phase is reality and the difference between trial is theater in a way you know I mean what comes in in trial a lot of times a stage performance doesn’t actually isn’t everything by any means um and we need to understand that our clients need to understand that because we want to help them the best that we can and to do that we need to show that we’re getting those help that get that help and we’re fixing this and ne never ever hurts a case. It never ever does that. And and when I was a prosecutor, I never looked at it that way. And I know and you know, dealing regularly with our prosecutors locally here in York County and across other counties, I’ve never had a prosecutor tell me that that that oh, your client must be guilty because he’s doing treatment. Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that either. Yeah. Yeah. So, definitely a misnomer to uh dispel as not real. Um if anybody uh you know has those thoughts, just I got one more thing to add to that. um you know when we are having our clients go and do treatment and evaluations again like you said it’s not making you look guilty whether you’re guilty or not if you’re doing these things you’re helping yourself and you’re bettering yourself and isn’t that the ultimate goal you know we want people to be better we want people to get the help that they need so I think that’s a big big aspect of why we do what we do and how we handle our cases and our clients because whether they’re guilty or not, most of them come to us because they need help. I I tell people all the time that this whenever you’re charged or if you’re a victim or a witness or something cuz we have people come to us with those kinds of situations too and they want representation because they want to be careful about what they say or maybe there’s some weird exposure or something for them. And no matter what part you’re playing in the process, it’s a process. And I tell people all the time, and I think I’ve heard you say this too, the process exists, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but the people who tend to have the best results are the people who engage with the process. Absolutely. If you come through it and you say, “I hate this. Screw it. I don’t care about any of it. I don’t care what the judge tells me. Screw the victim. That person sucks.” And and that’s your attitude about everything and you just want to be contrary and fight about everything. You’re going to probably find that the result you get at the end is not a good one. Yeah. And frankly, Tim, you know, if somebody has that type of an attitude in a case, and this is to your point too, Justin, like I I want to help people as people, right? Like I obviously as a lawyer and as a defense attorney here in York County, our main goal in every case is to get the best outcome we can for our client, right? Yes. But that is almost like it transcends into helping the human being as well become a better person and maybe fix some real root issues that are involved in that person’s life. Uh and maybe even make their relationships better with the people they love. Um make them healthier as human beings. Stop it from happening again which is counter which is not in our interest by the way. Like let’s be clear about that because if we were really like sleazy and we didn’t care about people, it’s in our interest for these people to keep coming back to us. Right. If Yeah. If you look at the bottom line, right, we want repeat clients, right? But at the same time, that’s not real. We don’t we don’t want that. We don’t um and really we don’t. And there are definitely attorneys, you know, in York County and other counties surrounding us that are like that. But that’s that’s in our I know the way we view practicing law. Again, our main goal is let’s get the best outcome we can, but let’s help the people and let’s get to know them as as people. And if we can fix both the legal part of it and help the person, that’s a win every day of the week, right? I mean, would you guys agree that that’s to kind of bring it back too to the whole central discussion here about like felonies and arrest warrants too is that that’s that’s part of why our theory on that is that it’s better to roger up to the charges sooner rather than later because you mean engage engage with the charges to to come in and take ownership and actually respond to the warrant because I mean we’ve seen people that they think they can run forever and you know 10 years later now they’re having to come in on an arrest warrant for a case from 10 years ago. and maybe they’re getting extradited from another state, which is a whole mess, which I have. I mean, I’ve I’ve had several people that are getting extradited and and when you have that kind of a situation, the odds of you getting out of jail before the resolution of the case start to go down pretty exponentially. Yes. So, it is in your interest for you to take some acknowledgement, at least engagement. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t don’t hide. Don’t put your head in the sand. and then we can have potentially a favorable bail determination at the at the time and then you’re out. You can engage with treatment. You can do things and prepare for your case. If you decide you’re just not going to you’re just going to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist. I mean, it will catch up to you eventually. Yeah. And honestly, clients that come to see me, and I think you guys too, that it it have that type of an attitude or literally are just completely unwilling to help themselves, literally are shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, a lot of times I say, you know, I want to help you and this is what I can do for you, but I can’t I’m not willing to do that because that’s counterintuitive to the outcome here, right? Yeah. Um, I mean, I I definitely want to help everybody that comes in the door to to see us, but there are times that as private criminal defense attorneys, we have to say no to a case. And we have somebody who’s not willing to engage properly in the process or let us help them, right? And I think it’s important to understand like I’m not here saying, “Oh, I’m some big bad expert on this.” But the people are coming to see us because we are experts in criminal defense. That’s what we do for a living. That’s our job. And they have to understand that, right? We want them to like take our advice. Like we’ve been through this a thousand times. Like let me help you and listen. And uh if you’re receptive to that, you’re going to you’re going to soar. You’re going to get a way way better outcome in the long term. And you’ll be happier for it, you know? Absolutely. And I think like you said, there’s kind of the the people that will come in and just want to fight about everything and don’t want to engage or follow through with what we’re telling them is is pretty much tried tried and true, right? Um, and I think that when you get people like that, especially in our first initial meetings and consults, most of us, well, all of us, I would say at this point, can pretty easily tell if someone’s going to be a problem or they’re going to, you know, listen to us and follow our advice. And that was one thing I never understood uh on my first round of defense or as a prosecutor. And luckily, I haven’t really had it too many times, uh, being back here, but it always blew my mind that people will, you know, pay an attorney, um, you know, whatever it may be, and then not listen to them. Um, and I saw that a lot as a prosecutor where, you know, I’m doing my best to resolve a case uh with defense attorneys and they’re giving me, you know, certain mitigation or certain things, but then if there was something I wanted more to give them a better, you know, plea offer or negotiate further, they weren’t willing to listen to their attorney, it’s like you said, they’re shooting themselves in the foot and they’re not going to get a good result. Yeah. Like they’re literally being handed in a wrapped up basket like this is how you fix your case. Yes. and they still won’t do it, you know. And again, this is the minority. Absolutely minority. You know, this is not the majority, but part of the reason we do this podcast is we want people to know what not to do, like how to handle this the best way, right? Uh and obviously we tell our clients this in our meetings and we have with them, right, in their individual case. But, uh I think just to get that out to the general public as a whole is so big. Um one of the other things I want to talk about on this episode is um we have something when it comes to bail. If you get picked up on like a warrant, you like actually get arrested. You didn’t set it up the early with your attorney and you actually get arrested and you’re brought before a judge, that’s a duty judge. That is maybe not even the judge that is going to be overseeing your case. And we sometimes see bail positions when it’s a duty judge, when the person doesn’t have an attorney when you’re arrested. Bail positions that are not very favorable to our clients. Right. Yes. And you avoid that by what? having the attorney ahead of time or engaging in the process as soon as possible. So, um, Tim, tell me a little bit about like the duty judge process and how that works. Well, I think to effectively answer that question, we probably have to back out even a little bit further and talk about what are some of the things that the judge is looking at because every judge is going to look at different things when they’re setting bail. Different duty judges have different sensibilities, too. Some judges, if you have a gun charge, that skyrockets what their what their thinking is on the bail determination. If there’s flight, if you’re a repeat offender, if you’ve got connections to York County or to the state of Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth, and I think I know some judges that if you if you do not live in Pennsylvania, that is a very huge favor a factor in favor of setting monetary bail on you because you don’t have a connection. Absolutely. And you’re you’re right. Um, and I I see those uh we all see those bales that are really high and you’re like, why is this type of a bail high? And then you look at where the client lives and they live in, you know, even just as close as Maryland sometimes and the judge is like, oh, they don’t have any association with your county and therefore they’re just deemed a flight risk outright, which to some degree you understand because that is built into the rules. One of the things they’re looking for is connection to the community. if you if you kind of were transient, you just committed a crime in York County and then you dipped out. There’s a question there about whether you’re going to show up to any court dates in the future. But to answer your question more directly about, you know, the duty judge thing, the judge that is is the issuing authority in the jurisdiction where your charges are filed. That’s the judge that’s going to interact with you at the preliminary hearing. That’s the judge that’s going to hear from the officer, is going to hear the facts of your case. they’re the first ones that are really going to hear the facts of your case. So, they a lot of times that that gives us a chance to address bail with them if there is something that was done by the duty judge that isn’t good. But sometimes that’s like a month or two down the line. You don’t want to wait that far. It’s better for you to take the initiative, go in front of that judge, and then you can start to plant some seeds about, you know, judge, this is the kind of person this person is. This is, you know, their side of it. there’s a, you know, there’s a dispute of ownership as to the item that was stolen or whatever, and this person made some some bad decisions, but they’re here, they got an attorney, they’re going to show up to all court dates, and that judge now, they can start to actually put some kind of a personality with the name that’s on the docket sheet, right? And let’s be real, like, you know, if you show up on your own to your actual judge to turn yourself in, and when I say turn yourself in, I don’t mean to turn yourself in and go to jail. I mean, to just address your bail, to engage in the process with a lawyer, that judge intrinsically is already seeing that you’re engaging appropriately in the process. And I I recommend people to dress nicely. I mean, yeah. No pajama pants, like none of that garbage. I mean, I had a guy just recently that dressed very well for a summary case, and that made a difference. Yeah. I’ve literally had judges like say, “Thank you so much for dressing.” before we even start the hearing. And my clients already got a leg up. Yeah. And and we didn’t get all of what we were looking for in that case, but I was asking the judge to do something that they had flat out told us they were not going to do. And so when he showed up, we had a bunch of mitigation. He looked nice. He was presentable. He he presented well. And the judge now, instead of giving us a flat no, is saying, “Well, I want to hear more. I want to hear why should I do this?” Yeah. You posture before. Yeah. You respected me. You respected the process. I’m going to give you the respect of hearing you out. Right. So, you get to set the pace when you show up to to address the warrant. You can show up, make a good impression on the judge, and we can kind of start to tell the judge this is the kind of person this is. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Great guys. Well, that was a really fun episode. I think it was extremely informative. Um, we’ll probably dive a lot into different factors there in the future. Uh, thanks for watching uh the Now We Defend podcast. Uh, we’ll have more episodes coming to you real soon. Take care.
