Criminal Defense Lawyer Explains What To Do When A Friend Is Arrested

Know Someone Who Was Arrested? Here Is What To Do

This is one of those situations you never hope you face. You know the one when you get the phone call at 2 AM, which could be someone telling you that they have been arrested. You know how it is you will get the call from the collect call saying, “You have a collect call from Harris County Jail from an inmate” on the line with the plea from a friend or family member who is looking for money.

If you have never had to face this before you will probably have some major questions like, “How long does it take for people to go to jail?” and “What is going on during the booking?” If you have never seen someone arrested before, you need to realize that you will want to move quickly versus a system that takes its time. You will want to make sure you follow these steps in the proper order to make sure your friend or family member is out of jail quickly. Here is all that you need to know to get them home quickly.

1. Keep Everything On The Right Path

You should keep calm. Now, this may not be that obvious, but you will find that this is going to be one of the top listed things that you need to do. You will want to know about what happened during the arrest by using these three steps:

Politely ask the office for the exact charges.

You will also want to ask the officer the name or location of the jail where your friend will be taken to. You do not want to argue with the police officer. That will not make anything better and could cause even more problems. If the arrest happened and you were not present, you will want to keep calm. You will want to make the most out of the time on the phone by finding out the charges and location of where they are. If they start to ramble on about the cars, the charges, or even details you need to make them stop. You need to get the most out of the limited amount of time you will have on the phone with them.

No matter the charges if it was a small amount of weed or an aggravated assault you will want to make sure you contact a criminal defense lawyer in Houston. Now, this is something you do need to realize is when you are using phone calls you may not realize it, but some of the phone calls are recorded and used in court. You will want to let them know that you are going to work quickly and stay calm and not talk about the case until they have hired a criminal defense lawyer.

You may even hear people say, “I think my buddy went to jail, how do I locate him or her?” If you have only heard about the arrest and have not had any contact with them, you will find that you can find websites that are going to make it easier for you to find the charges and know if they have had a bond set or not. Often, you will find the first place to start is going to the Houston Police Department or the Jails website to see if you can find the information on any of the inmates that are around.

2. Get In Touch With A Bail Bondsman

You will notice that if you do know someone that has been arrested you will want to get in touch with a bail bondsman. This is one thing that you may have never heard, but the hard truth is it can take some time to get someone out of jail. Even if you have followed the cruise to the jail with a million bucks, you still have to wait for the processing and often an arraignment before getting them out. This process can take hours to days depending on the charges.

How can you best speed up the process? You will find that you can contact a bail bondsman before you even get in touch with a criminal defense lawyer.

The bondsmen will often have information that you do not have available and this is going to make it easier for you to get the friend out even faster. You will find the bondsmen tend to want 10% of the bail and then they will post the bond and collect your friend from jail. Not only that, you will find that you can have an extra fee paid that will make the bondsman wait in line or even get the fund delivered to make it easier for your friend to get out.

3. Call Jim Butler At The Butler Law Firm

After the bondsman has been contacted you will want to get in touch with a criminal defense lawyer. You will want to make sure you contact the best legal defense in Houston,  and should that involve DWI charges, that is the lawyers at Butler Law Firm. You will want to make sure you get your free consult as we are available 24/7.

We have helped clients beat multiple charges for DWI, DUI, BWI, and so on. The team is very experienced and going to be looking at protecting the freedom you have each step of the way and answering the questions of, “What to do if you have a warrant?” to “How long will it take me to get to court after I have been charged?”

Visit our blog for more related articles. We also invite you to contact or call us today if you are in need of the best DWI Law Attorney in Houston.