Any apprehension for breach of law interrupts your life. You cannot grow and expand your business, spend time with your family and enjoy freedom while in jail. It’s the reason you need a discrete and prompt bondsman to bring you closer to your life before the arrest by posting bail bonds. At Cali Bail Bonds, we are ready to educate you on surety bonds and how they work in La Habra. Our bondsmen will help raise the necessary bail and ensure you defend your charges from home and not jail.
Under the 8th amendment, you have conferred the right to request bail, post bail, and be released before the completion of your case hearing. For this reason, there is a system called bail, which allows individuals like you who have been arrested to pay cash to secure a pretrial release. However, if the bail money is massive, you might not have some money like that waiting around. In these situations, instead of remaining behind bars until the close of the case, you or your family members can intervene by contacting a La Habra bail agency to plan for your freedom out of custody.
Therefore, a bail bond is a contract between you, your La Habra bondsman, the court, and the cosigner, requiring the cosigner to ensure the defendant complies with the pretrial release conditions. The surety is paid in the promise that you, being the defendant, will appear in the arranged court proceedings.
Additionally, you or the cosigner will be required to pay a predetermined or set fee. Typically, the agent fee is 10% of the total bail, and once it’s settled, it cannot be refunded, whether you appear or not. In addition, the bondsman might require you or the cosigner to deposit assets or property to act as insurance if you skip court and the bond is forfeited. You can deposit as collateral items like vehicles, real property, or jewelry. You must deposit ownership deeds with your bail agency for cars and real property.
Once you attend all your court-arranged proceedings and abide by the release terms, the bail agency will return your property or assets regardless of the court’s verdict. The bail agent needs you to attend court proceedings and obey your release terms to produce your collateral.
Bail bonds provide you, as a defendant, the opportunity to enjoy freedom before your trial. Unlike the misconception, bail is not a way of punishing accused persons or raising money for the state or federal government. The amount you pay depends on your criminal history, the record of court attendance in previous cases, and the severity of the offense. Bail is never determined on an innocent or guilty basis.
Under the law, you are innocent until proven otherwise by a court of law. Bail is established on this premise, meaning you shouldn’t remain in detention, primarily if your crime is categorized as a misdemeanor or less severe felony.
The bail system is advantageous for you and the criminal justice system. The system has been used to reduce congestion in correctional facilities, which has been a significant problem for a long time. With many defendants being released until case determination, only those proven guilty, denied bail or facing severe felony charges remain behind bars making it easy to manage and reduce congestion in jails.
The bond serves as security that you wish to show up for the court-ordered hearings. If you don’t show up in court, you forfeit the bail, are rearrested, and charged with jumping bail or contempt of court.
Once you are out on bail, you have time to work, spend time with family, and afford an experienced criminal defense attorney. With the help of an attorney, you prepare more adequately for the case increasing the chances of a favorable outcome. With the help of a La Habra bail agent, you will obtain freedom and resume your everyday life through bail bond services.
The bail process commences after you have been arrested and processed. After, you will undergo the bail process, where you deposit a particular sum of money with the court promising to comply with all the release conditions, including court attendance.
Once you learn of your apprehension, you should reach out to your lawyer for a recommendation or find a legitimate bondsman. Considering many companies are offering bail services and claiming to be the best in the market, you should choose a bail service carefully because they are not all equal. Your lawyer could be an incredible source of referrals.
Apart from referrals, you should research the bail agencies in your locality. Ensure you pick an agency with flexible payment terms and modes during this process. Also, you must obtain a detailed quotation indicating all the costs you will incur. If the trial continues for over one year, you need to know if you will be required to pay an annual renewal fee.
Again, if you have a friend, coworker, or relative who has been in jail before and used bail bonds services to obtain freedom, you can talk to them for recommendations. Once you have a few names of reputable local bail agencies, you can check their websites online and visit the reviews section to see what previous agency clients have to say about services obtained. A genuine agency that will help you meet your needs is one with happy clients who are satisfied by the services offered. And because it’s challenging to find all positive reviews, ensure you choose the company whose positive reviews exceed the negative ones.
After you have found the right La Habra bail agency, you should then contact them or ask your lawyer or family member to contact the agency to start the paperwork right away. The bonds company will need your legal name, the type of charge, bail amount, and collateral to process your request for bail.
A judge sets bail in a bail hearing. Here, you will not be read the charges and asked to plead to the criminal charges. Instead, the court assesses your bail qualification. The requirements the court needs to determine your bail eligibility and amount are:
Since October 2019, California courts have been using bail algorithms to determine those qualified for bail and what they should pay. Also, the judge has the discretion to increase or reduce the predetermined bail in the schedule.
Bail determination comes with certain conditions. These restrictions are:
After bail determination, you can choose to pay the entire bail in cash or purchase a bail bond by paying a non-refundable fee of 10% of the total bail for the services.
If you have strong community links or are charged with a minor offense for the first time, the judge can release you on your recognizance.
If you cannot afford to raise the bond money set by the court, you can ask your lawyer, family members, or friends to reach out to a La Habra bail agency, which will then start the process of freeing you from custody. If you are not a flight risk and the state lacks hold on you, the company will proceed to pay bail.
Before bail payment, you will meet the cosigner and the bondsman in your jail location to sign the final agreement and leave custody. You will need a bond agency with connections even in the banking sector so that once the court orders your release, the agency can post bail any time of the day for prompt release. You will sign an application form and indemnity contract, and you will be free.
Even after you are out of detention, your bail agency will keep in touch to monitor your behavior and encourage you to keep showing up in court.
If you fail to show up in court, there will be bail revocation and forfeiture. You may be rearrested and forced to apply for bail afresh in any of these scenarios. Alternatively, if bail is revoked, you will be ineligible to apply for the second time, remaining in custody until the trial is over.
The judge issues a bench warrant and a grace period when you don’t show up in court as arranged. If you appear before the court before the lapse of the grace period, your bail will stand if you have a legal reason for jumping bail. Sometimes bail still stands even after you have breached the imposed conditions. However, if you don’t turn up during the grace period, you will repay the entire bail or the collateral seized and sold. Often, you will be rearrested and denied bail for the rest of the court proceedings.
Nonetheless, if you appear as agreed upon, the collateral will be returned to the cosigner within eight weeks. Your La Habra bail agency and the court will consider you a low-risk defendant, increasing the chances of release on bail if you are charged in the future.
Revocation and forfeiture are closely related terms. Bail forfeiture occurs when you violate the court-imposed terms for your freedom. Nevertheless, bail revocation is the cancellation of bail by the cosigner or bondsman when they believe in good faith that you are a flight risk or might miss the ordered hearings.
When your cosigner or bondsman revokes your bail, you can’t obtain the 10% fee as it’s non-refundable. Additionally, you will need another bondsman or cosigner to prevent an arrest.
Although the cosigner might appear less crucial in the bail process if they choose to revoke the bail, they can because they have the right to do so. The reason being assets or property has been placed as collateral, and if you skip court, it’s their property that will be lost. Therefore, the cosigner must observe you closely and ensure you abide by the release conditions. Sometimes, the cosigner might impose other conditions on your release, like the requirement to participate in a rehabilitation program. All these efforts are geared towards reducing the risk of losing assets in bail forfeiture.
Recall, when you forfeit bail, the bail agency is forced to pay the total amount. After this, they turn to the cosigner and seize the assets placed as collateral to cover their losses. When a forfeiture happens, the bondsman and surety will receive a notice from the court’s clerk within thirty days. Once the announcement has been mailed, the court will have one hundred and eighty days to enter a summary judgment.
You can defend against forfeiture if the following is true:
When you are bailing a loved one out and using your collateral to secure the surety bond, you have specific responsibilities like paying the entire bond when the defendant disobeys the terms of the contract. Therefore, you should protect yourself from these losses. The ways to protect yourself include asking for clarification before signing any paperwork. Do not sign any documents you don’t understand. If something is not clear, ask for clarification from the bail agent. Also, you should understand your duties and the risks you face as the cosigner.
Similarly, keep in touch with the defendant by calling them regularly or visiting them in person. That way, you stay updated on their whereabouts and conduct during this time they are out of jail.
And because the defendant is required to have a job as a condition for the release, you should visit their place of work regularly and ensure they are performing their duties as needed. Besides, you could talk to their employer to learn more about their behavior. If there are red flags of skipping court or violating bail conditions, you can report the defendant to court on time to avoid losing the assets used as collateral for the bond.
Before signing the documents, ensure the accused is trustworthy because you will be responsible for their actions. And when they skip court, you are the person to carry the burden for the defendant by paying the bond in full. Therefore, ensure the defendant you are bailing out is someone you know and trust.
Lastly, you can exercise your right to revoke bail if you see anything that might indicate the defendant will skip town or violate other pretrial release terms. From here, the defendant will be rearrested and placed in custody until they reapply for bail.
The prosecuting lawyer or the victim of your criminal act can file a motion to withdraw or revoke your bail bond if there is a reasonable belief that you breached your bail conditions. Before the court determines the motion, they must decide whether you have violated the release conditions.
Also, when you contravene the law while out on bond, your bail will be automatically revoked. An offense like robbery will result in immediate arrest and incarceration. Also, if the court considers you a flight risk or it emerges that you are a threat to society, the court will revoke your bail.
A bond discharge releases all the parties involved off any bail obligations after the case's conclusion or when you surrender to the authorities after skipping court.
Note that if you use bail services to purchase a bond, you won’t receive any refund at the close of the case because the 10% fee you pay is for the services rendered by the bail agency, thus non-refundable. However, any valuable item attached to the bond, like security, will be refunded.
The La Habra Police Department
150 N. Euclid Street
La Habra, CA 90633
(562) 383-4319
North Justice Center
1275 North Berkeley Avenue
Fullerton, CA 92832-1258
+1 657-622-5600
An apprehension will throw you and your family in a crisis, and you might feel hopeless because of the various questions you have regarding leaving jail. Luckily, the bail system is available to help you out of jail, and if you can’t consolidate the amount, you have the option of buying a bail bond. At Cali Bail Bonds, we offer bail services to Orange County residents who need a speedy and effective pretrial release. Therefore, if you need our services or have inquiries, don’t hesitate to call us at 562-376-5476 for an over-the-phone or face-to-face consultation.
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