IF YOU HAVE BEEN CHARGED, MAKE THE RIGHT CALL
Most people who call this firm about a charge have never been arrested before, and a good number of them start by apologizing. They are braced for a lecture. They do not get one. Being charged is an accusation, not a verdict, and we have represented more than forty-one thousand people on criminal matters since 1995 — whatever happened to you last weekend, it is not new here and it will not change how you are spoken to.
What we do want to know early is what this charge threatens beyond the courtroom. In Portsmouth that is usually work — a clearance review, whether the gate opens on Monday, a commercial license, an employer who runs annual checks, a nursing board, a shift held since before the children were born. It matters because it changes strategy. A plea that looks generous on paper is the worse outcome if it is the one that gets reported, and a fight that looks unnecessary can be the one that saves the thing you were actually frightened of.
The reason we can usually answer that early rather than late is that two of our attorneys have worked the other side of it. George Neskis spent four years as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney; Cole Roberts began as a public defender, which is the heaviest caseload anybody in a courthouse carries. Between them they have watched cases get charged, screened and priced long before a defense lawyer ever saw the file — so when we tell you what the Commonwealth is likely to do with yours, it is a read rather than a guess. That is a practical advantage, not a relational one.
WHAT WE BRING TO A PORTSMOUTH FILE
SOME OF THIS ONLY WORKS EARLY
The Third Judicial Circuit will take a Portsmouth case through the General District Court and, where the charge is a felony, up to the Circuit Court by way of a preliminary hearing and a grand jury. Juvenile and domestic matters go to their own court. None of that is unusual and most people never need to understand it, right up until the week they do.
What matters more than the sequence is where you are in it. Ask for discovery early and you get answers; ask late and you get another court date. Arrive with a bond argument already built and it is a different conversation from one assembled in the hallway. Speak to a witness this month and they describe the evening; speak to them in six months and they describe being asked about it. None of this is clever lawyering. It is only that the window sits in front of each stage and never behind it.
Which is why the first call is worth making before the first hearing rather than after it. Nobody here will only tell you what you would like to hear about a charge. What you will get is the realistic range of outcomes, a straight answer about whether the job or the clearance is genuinely in danger, and a list of what has to happen this week to protect the better end of it.
DEFENDING CLIENTS SINCE 1961
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41,000+
criminal clients represented firmwide since 1995
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4
years one of our attorneys spent as a prosecutor
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65+
years of winning cases in Portsmouth
DECKER LAW IN PORTSMOUTH:
ASK US WHAT IT ACTUALLY COSTS
Bring us the charge, and the thing you are actually afraid of losing. Free, confidential, any hour — 757-622-3317.