The Criminal Defense Process Part 4- Establishing a Bond.

The Criminal Defense Process Part 4 – Establishing a Bond

Hello, my name is Brandan Davies. I am a criminal defense lawyer with the law firm Copley, Roth & Davies based out of Overland Park, Kansas. In this series of videos, I am walking you through, from start to finish, a criminal defense case. In this video, I am going to be talking about bond. Now, after an allegation that a crime has been committed, after the district attorney’s office has charged someone with a crime, and after that person has been arrested, we get to bond. What bond is, is it is essentially a promise that a person will come back to court. And in some cases, your promise may not be as good as your word so the judge will establish an amount of money or some sort of other condition that will ensure that you come back to court. Now, when bond takes place at the beginning of a case, a judge is going to consider a lot of different things when they set an amount for bond. They are going to look at your criminal history. They are going to look at the severity level of the crime in which you are charged with. They are going to look at your past crimes and if you failed to appear at court on those crimes. They are going to look at the likelihood that you return to court on this case and then they are going to look at the safety of the community. The judge is going to weigh all of these factors and then they are going to establish an amount of money, or bond, that you would have to pay or secure with the court for you to be released, pending your upcoming case. Now, there are lots of other things that a judge can do as well. It is not limited to just an amount of money. The judge can set other conditions. The judge can put you on house arrest. The judge can make you have a remote breath unit if they think you have an alcohol or drug problem they want to monitor. They can put you on GPS tracking. They can put you with pretrial services. There are hosts of different things that a judge can make you do while on bond to secure that you are going to come back to court or address some sort of problem that the judge thinks you have. Now, a bond amount or bond conditions will vary widely depending on you and your case. And at some point, you will get a chance to argue those conditions or argue for a bond if one has not been established, or a bond that has been established that is too high for you to make. This is when your criminal defense lawyer comes in. For more information on bond, and how bond works, and when you will be able to talk about adjusting your bond for a motion to modify your bond, please watch our next video on first appearances.