Hello, my name is Chris Morales I’m a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco,California. I’m a board certified specialist in criminal law. Today we are going to talk about the law of bail. It’s in the United States Constitution that everybody that is arrested and charged with a crime has the right to bail. The only exception to that is if somebody is charged with murder and then there will be no bail that is in California only. So, how does the law of bail work? When somebody is arrested by the police and they are taken to the county jail the jailers
will set an amount for bail and that is based on the charges. So if it is a drug case, the bail may be $10,000, if it is a gun case bail may be $20,000, if it is a burglary case bail may $100,000. How does the family and friends go about posting that bail? There are basically 3 ways. You can use a bails bondman and the bail bondsman usually charge between 5 and 10 percent of the whole amount in order to bail somebody out. You can go to my website at www.sfcriminallawspeicalist.com. and I have posted the names of a couple of
my favorite bails bondsman there. So you can use a bail bondsman. You can also give the jailers the full amount. So if bail is $10,000 you can go there with a check/cashiers check for $10,000, $10,000 in cash or $10,000 on your credit card they will take that and hold that amount of money until the case is over. Once the case is over then they will return that money to whomever posted it. So once either bail is posted by cash or through a bail bondsman then it usually takes about 4 or 5 hours for the person to be released.
Bail has to be posted there has to be a lot of paper work done then the person is released. Now there is a third way to post bail.This takes a little bit longer if you have real estate or property that is worth two in a half times the amount of bail then you can turn that property over to the Superior Court judge and the county where the person is being held and the judge will hold that property and then release the person.When the case is over the judge will return that property back over to whomever put that property up.
This process can take a week or two if not longer because the judge is going to want an appraisal of the house. The judge is going to want there is enough equity in the house or at least twice the amount of bail. In other words, if the bail is $100,000 then there has to be enough equity in the house or houses for $200,000 at least. And that has to be on an appraisal that was done within 6 months. So those are the 3 ways to post bail. Please go to my website to find out more about the law of bail and also follow me on Twitter,
and Facebook and Google+. Again, my website address is www.sfcriminallawspecialist.com. Call me for a free consultation at (415) 552-1215.
The Law of Bail
Criminal Defense Attorney – Christopher Morales
Practice Area: The San Francisco Bay Area, California
Call us today for a free consultation (415) 552-1215 (Se Habla Español)
Website: www.sfcriminallawspecialist.com
