If Bond Is Set At $2,000, You Will Pay Around $200 (10% Of The Total Amount)
Video Transcribed: You’ve decided to turn yourself in because you have a warrant. What should you expect with a Tahlequah warrant? My name is Ryan Cannonie, I am the Tahlequah family attorney for Wirth Law Office in Cherokee County. And this is something that happens a lot. A lot of times, attorneys will talk to the DA’s office about, “Hey, we know you’re getting ready to file charges or we have a warrant out there for one of our clients.
Can we bring them in on a certain day and then have them processed through so that they’re not arrested and have to go to jail all weekend?” That type of thing. One of the things that, when people contact me, at least, and asking about this warrant, getting it recalled or getting a walkthrough set up, I always tell them, “Be ready to pay a bond.”
You never really know, especially if there’s not a bond listed on the offense. Like domestic assault and battery will, a lot of times, not have an amount listed for bond on the warrant. It’s kind of a nasty surprise you find out when you get to court.
But be prepared. If you call us, if you call me, if I’m going to a county, then most of the time I know what the bonds schedules are going to be around here in Cherokee.
I kind of know what they’re going to be set in other counties that I’m not familiar with. I call and ask what’s the normal bond? Or I have attorney friends there, I’ll text them and say, “Hey, I haven’t had a bond up here yet. What should I expect on this?” And that way I can tell my clients so they know.
Why is it important to know? Well, unless you’ve got a lot of money just sitting in the bank, if you’re going to do bond, most people go through a bonds person. And if you go to a bonds person, you’re going to have to know about how much money you’re going to be spending because there’s a certain percentage of that that you’re going to be paying them. And that’s how they make their money. So 8% to 13%, somewhere in there, is usually what most charge.
A lot of them will just do 10%. So if it’s a $2,000 bond, you’re going to be doing about $200. $1000 bond, $100. You can kind of see where that goes. So talking with a bonds person, getting it set up so that they can be there to walk you through, to bond you out, just so you have the money on hand to pay them.
It’s real important, a lot of times, to get all that stuff resolved on the front end. That way, when you go in, the process is already kind of scary, and it’s already a lot of terms that you’re not familiar with. And there’s a judge, there’s a courtroom. It makes it a lot easier for you.
It makes it a little bit more calming for you knowing that whatever happens in there, you’re not going to be locked in jail for a week or two. You’re just going to go in, get fingerprinted, do the intake process, and then be released on the bond that the bond person is paying. Or like I said, if you have a account with just a bunch of money in it, you can pay yourself.
Now, if you pay your own bond, as long as you’re showing up, and as long as you’re coming to court, you’ll get that money back at the end. That’s how bonds people work. You pay them a certain percentage, they put the money up, and then as long as you show up, they get their money back. If you don’t show up, they’ll track you down, drag you back to court, have you arrested and get their money back. That’s really what you’re looking at there.
So there are some counties that are doing, especially because of COVID, allowing either you to be released based on your attorney, you have an attorney, your attorney will say, “I’ll be in court,” or they’ll be in court releasing you on that.
There are some counties on misdemeanors, because they don’t want their jail full of people and COVID to spread everywhere, they’re ORing, which is ordered release of people. So you don’t pay a bond. You’ll see this happen mostly on misdemeanors or extremely kind of low ranking felonies of maybe property crimes that are not violent or barely meet the threshold to be a felony.
One property crime that I’m probably going to make some videos about at a certain point because it was something that every prosecutor I ever knew in my seven years working as a prosecutor hated these charges. It’s embezzlement of rental property.
And most of the time, that is where you go someplace, rent a TV for however many thousands of dollars it is or rent to buy. If you don’t return it within 10 days of the contract being over or being in breach, then you’re charged with a felony.
A lot of felonies get charged for that. And everyone kind of knows that this is not a violent offense, a lot of times it’s not something like someone broke into a house and stole something. So courts will often let those people off either with really low bonds or, now with COVID, maybe an ordered release or a personal recognizance.
Personal recognizance means that you’re being let out or you’re not having to post a bond, you’re just coming in or being arraigned, and then you’re able to leave on your own word that you’ll come back to court.
Now, if you fail to appear for court, here’s where all this kind of hits the wall or fan as it were on this. If you fail to appear in court, most of the time your judges are going to forfeit your bond, meaning that that money disappears. If it was your money, it’s gone. If it was a bonds person’s money, they’re going to track you down, get you up there. They have a certain amount of time to do that before it’s gone.
And then they’ll put either put a no bond out until you’re arrested and they can then have you brought in and issue a bond, or they’re going to double or triple your bond. So if you were in there on a $2,000 bond, congrats, your fail to appear and made it a $4,000 or maybe even a $6,000 bond. So that’s how that all works.
So if you’re in a situation where you have a warrant for your arrest or you know there’s charges coming, don’t wait if you know they’re coming. If you know there’s a warrant, don’t just kind of let it sit. Because every time you get caught speeding, they’re going to see you have a warrant and they may end up holding you for it, they may not.
But regardless, it’s going to tie up your day a little more than you probably want it to. Come talk to an attorney, come give us a call. You can go online to tahlequahattorney.com, send us a web form. We can try to help you.
We can try to maybe contact the DA’s office, contact the judges, get it set up so you can do a walkthrough, see if they’d be even willing to let you out on an OR or a PR bond. And sometimes you can get those for medical too, that’s another thing I forgot to add. So there are some options out there. If you have questions or if you know someone that has questions, point them our way and we’ll have a Tahlequah attorney can help you.
