Los Angeles Bench Warrant Lawyer
This is probably one of the easiest things in criminal defense to deal with! The judge will automatically recall and quash the warrant by appearing with your attorney in court. The tricky part of this process is what happens with the case once the contract is placed?
This depends on several important factors that a veteran criminal defense attorney can only assess. One key thing to remember is that by surrendering and coming into court with an attorney, you put yourself in the best possible position to achieve a result you can live with. Instead, if you continue to do nothing and bury your head in the sand, you will eventually get caught and suffer the most severe consequences.
Sometimes so much time has passed that the prosecutors can no longer prove the case against you, and it must be dismissed. Other times, they can prove the case against you, but it is so old, and you have now turned your life around, and they are much easier to deal with than if you had had to defend yourself when the incident initially happened.
There are, of course, situations where a person has already pled guilty and did not do what they were ordered to do by the court. In this case, it is up to the defense attorney to figure out what the client can do to satisfy the court and prosecutor and move on with their life! So make sure you have an experienced bench warrant attorney who understands all the legalities of your case.
Having a bench warrant issued in your name can be stressful because you can be arrested on any day or night. Whenever you are in public and see a police officer or a vehicle, a paranoid feeling like the police know about your warrant creeps over you. It is something that makes you feel like not leaving your house. You can't be happy or productive. Even if you stay inside your home, the paranoia can set in, making you worry the police could kick your door in at any moment and take you away! You are not alone. You are not the only person ever to make a mistake.
Thousands of people in the more excellent Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley area live with a bench warrant hanging over their heads. Get the monkey off your back and contact a bench warrant lawyer.
The court will be more lenient if you go in with an experienced professional attorney guiding you into the courtroom. A legal bodyguard, if you will. An attorney can protect you, finding alternative punishment not involving incarceration. Call our office to get help.
Factors to Help You Resolve Your Warrant
One of the biggest things that the judges ask when you appear to take care of your warrant is why your client has waited so long to keep their warrant and what they have been doing since the warrant was issued. If we can come up with a plausible reason for your absence and explain that you have been getting your act together since the warrant, you have a fighting chance to unscathed the other end.
Remember, you are coming in with an attorney you hired to resolve things to clear another case off the court's busy docket. Versus, they picked you up on the warrant, and you would have never come in if they had missed you. Under these circumstances, the judge will lower the boom on you and teach you a lesson for defying the court's authority. However, all this can only be possible with an experienced and competent lawyer by your side.
Another formula for success is to come in ready to take care of whatever you were initially supposed to in the first place. If you were supposed to pay a fine and ran away, have the money now and be ready to pay it. Judges love it when you are there to take care of business and fulfill your obligations to them. If you can have some community work to do (cal trans, community labor, community service, etc.), be ready with a plan and a deadline for when you will complete it.
If you leave it lingering around, it will be easier for the court to give you jail time and be done with you. Speaking of jail time, I am always shocked when clients call after having a warrant in the system for an extended period because they failed to show up to do their jail time and ask me whether they can avoid the jail time they were initially supposed to do.
Think of the logic behind believing that you will somehow be rewarded because you stayed away from fulfilling your responsibilities for some time. In this circumstance, you are typically doing your jail time, and your attorney will be battling to keep you out of more time. You must act fast and contact a bench warrant lawyer as soon as you know that a bench warrant has been issued in your name.
Why Will a Judge Issue a Warrant?
There are several reasons why a judge may have issued a bench warrant for you. To name a few: failure to appear on a scheduled court date is the most common; failure to pay restitution or child support; failure to appear for a subpoena, a court order hearing, or for a citation; failure to appear for sentencing, which is another common cause of the a bench warrant.
The most common reason a judge will order a warrant for your arrest is that you did not do what you were supposed to do to comply with your probation's terms and conditions. If you know you have been issued a bench warrant, you must hire a criminal defense lawyer to go to court on your behalf, prevent an arrest, and have your contract recalled.
It is easy to get the warrant recalled, and the best criminal defense attorneys know how to convince the judge to keep you out of jail and give you a chance to move on with your life with your bench warrant safely behind you. To start the process, give us a call to discuss your situation. A bench warrant can result in jail, fines, probation, and community service in California. For this reason, it is essential to have an advocate by your side to do everything possible to get rid of the warrant, and your name cleared.
Our lawyers at the Hedding Law Firm will plead and negotiate on your behalf and do everything we can to convince the judge to give you a second chance. However, we do it professionally and tactfully with a plan constantly before entering the courtroom on your behalf. Give us a call and set up a free initial meeting. We will sit down with you, talk about your bench warrant and the reason for your issuance and start preparing an unbeatable defense for you. This phone call will be a life-changing moment, forever putting your assurance behind you.
Dealing With Your Warrant For A Better Quality Of Life
Those who have warrants do not deal with the impact on their quality of life because they have something hanging over their heads and refuse to deal with it. Taking care of your bench warrant or arrest warrant is something you must do to move on with your life.
Once you make this decision and you hire a criminal defense lawyer who knows what they're doing, you're going to start to take control of your warrant and, in turn, take care of your life. Nobody wants to have something hanging over their head. It interferes and affects the quality of your life, and when you don't take care of your warrant, ultimately, you will be arrested, and it will be much worse than if you had just walked in and taken care of it yourself.
Taking care of a warrant is easier than you think. Having dealt with warrants over the last twenty-five years, I see how shocked people realize how easy it is to take care of their warrant and what a relief it is once it's over.
The process is straightforward. We get to court early. We get the warrant over. We send it to court, and I discuss the case with the judge and the prosecutor. We tell them where you are with your life now. We figure out what has to be done and take care of it for you. Sometimes you'll have to finish what you didn't complete initially. Other times, it can be wiped out depending on whatever happened in the original warrant situation.
The bottom line is taking care of your warrant is much easier than you think, can be done professionally, and it will be behind you. That's the critical thing. Being able to move on unencumbered, live everyday life, and be without that warrant.
Get a Warrant Recalled and Quashed
For 26 years now, I've helped people clear up their California arrest or bench warrants in all Los Angeles County courts, including San Fernando Valley courthouses — Van Nuys, San Fernando — and all the outer-lying courthouses like Burbank, Glendale, and Pasadena. Malibu used to be open.
A lot of those have now been transferred to the Airport court. One common thing I see in these warrants is that people have this considerable scary thought about a warrant, and that's why they don't deal with it. That's why they just kind of don't deal with it, and once they end up hiring someone like me — who knows how to handle these cases — they come to court, and they deal with it — I see the sense of relief, and they're shocked at how easy it was to deal with the warrant.
It is easy to deal with a warrant because just you showing up with your attorney will get the warrant recalled and quashed. The more difficult thing to deal with a lot of times is the case. In other words, you depend on the type of case.
Is it a case that you didn't deal with, and now you have an open chance against you that you have to deal with? Those can sometimes be difficult. There's also a flip side to that, though, because a lot of these open cases — if enough time has gone by — the prosecutors may have problems proving them, so we can use that to our advantage in trying to resolve things.
The other issue that we have to look at and be concerned about is maybe you pled guilty to a crime. You were in the process of doing what you were supposed to, and then you failed to follow through and finish and go back to court and do whatever it is you were supposed to.
In that scenario, we will have to explain to the judge what happened. That's a simple fundamental question. You have a warrant out for your arrest. Why? What did you do wrong, and why did you do that? If we can explain that logically, we can take the next step on your warrant case and tell the judge what you're doing now and how you're moving forward in a positive direction.
Don't forget; you're already on the good foot because you're showing up. You hired a lawyer. You're dealing with your warrant. Suppose you're a family member calling because your loved one was caught on a contract, and now they're in custody. In that case, that's a more complex situation because the judge might take the position; that person would have never turned themselves in their warrant but for the authorities catching them.
Explaining Why You Have a Warrant
We have to employ a different strategy if that's the case. We're still going to need to explain why the person didn't show up for the warrant. We're still going to need to look at what the person is doing now, and hopefully, the person is doing well.
Hopefully, they've got a job, a family, whatever the case may be, that shows they're on the right track. The court's not going to have any problems with that person anymore, and yes, we will have to answer why they didn't that person show up to court and follow through and would the person have ever taken care of this.
Regardless, the courts deal with warrants every day of the week. I know how to handle these warrants. I've been doing this for 26 years. So, if you or a loved one has a warrant — even if you're out of state — even if you're in another country — I've been able to set things up to take the contract out of the system for some time.
This will allow you to travel back into the United States or to allow you to travel back to California. Then we appear in court, get the warrant taken care of, and deal with whatever issues surrounding the warrant. If it's handled the right way, I encourage you to deal with the warrant as soon as possible because if we can go in there with a strategy, that puts us in a powerful position to deal with the contract successfully.
Keeping You Out of Custody
What do I mean by that? What would be a success in a warrant situation? One successful thing would be if we could keep you out of custody. Nobody wants to go to jail, and that's usually the biggest fear and one of the biggest reasons people don't deal with their warrants.
So, if we can come up with another solution other than jail or prison time, obviously that's going to be something you want to deal with, and you're going to be happy about it, and you're going to be so relieved when you go in there. If we can work it out that you don't go into custody, you've taken care of your warrant. Now you've taken care of your case; you can move on.
I've been able to get felonies reduced to a misdemeanor many times. I've been able to get cases deleted, and these are cases that have been in warrant status for months and even years, and the people don't deal with them. They finally hired me. They deal with them. They're happy, and they put it behind them so they can move on with their life. It's difficult when you have a warrant hanging over your head. It interferes with your quality of life.
If you or a loved one has a warrant or needs help, I encourage you to pick up the phone. Make the call. I stand ready to put this warrant behind you and get you back out there, not having to worry or look over your shoulder.
Retain a California Criminal Lawyer
So, if you have a bench warrant, give us a call. Come and sit down with us. The process is easy. We'll quote your fee. It will be reasonable. We'll figure out why the warrant was issued in the first place. The judge will want the background – why did you not come to court – why didn't you do what you were supposed to and where are you now.
That's where we talk about your version of events, your life, and your situation, and then we can get the warrant taken care of immediately, and we can get you on the road to getting out of the criminal justice system once-and-for-all. Make the phone call to get your bench warrant taken care of so you never have to worry about it again.
Really what we need to know is what the case centered around, why the warrant was issued in the first place, and what you're doing in your life right now, and then we can get this warrant taken care of once-and-for-all and get you out of the criminal justice system. Contact the Hedding Law Firm for help. I can often clean up your record to move on unencumbered by your past warrant.
