JONATHAN BURGE

Attorney at Law

When the prosecutor’s office chooses to charge someone with a crime, they alone seek initial bail (except when the police department charges someone, which they set bail at their discretion).  This means that the sky can be, and often is, the limit.  As a result, a local person with no prior arrests and a relatively minor charge, say Terroristic Threatening, may face outrageously high bail.

However, once a person is able to obtain an attorney, that attorney can make a motion to the court to reduce the bail, or let the arrestee out without posting any bail.  This is one of the main reasons we encourage people to come in to see us prior to being charged, so that we can work on lowering the bail immediately.

By coming in early, we can contact the prosecutor’s office and make arrangements on bail and going to court.  Otherwise, a person has to be re-arrested after they are indicted.  Even if the prosecutor does not want to cooperate, we can make arrangements with bail bondsmen and police.  We try to avoid our clients being arrested again, especially at work.

Besides lowering bail, or supervised release, in the past we also have drafted the proper documents to put a person’s property up as their bail.  This saves them the 10% fee that is normally paid to a bondsman.  We also work with several bondsmen, assisting our clients to get released from jail as soon as possible.

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