IF YOU HAVE BEEN CHARGED, MAKE THE RIGHT CALL
Most people who call this firm about a charge have never been arrested and are braced for a lecture. They do not get one. Being charged is an accusation rather than a verdict, and we have represented more than forty-one thousand people on criminal matters since 1995. Whatever happened, it is not new here and it will not change how you are spoken to.
What we do want to know early is what the charge threatens outside the courtroom — a clearance, a license, an employer who runs annual checks, a job somebody has held for twenty years. That answer changes strategy, because a plea that reads generously 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 protects the thing you were actually afraid of losing.
The reason we can usually answer that early is that two of our attorneys worked the other side of it. George Neskis spent four years as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney; Cole Roberts began as a public defender, the heaviest caseload anybody in a courthouse carries. Between them they watched cases get charged, screened and priced long before a defense lawyer saw the file, so a read on what the Commonwealth will do with yours is a read rather than a guess. That is a practical advantage, not a relational one.
WHAT WE BRING TO A SUFFOLK FILE
A CIRCUIT THAT COVERS MORE THAN THIS CITY
A Suffolk case runs 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 have their own court. What makes Suffolk different from the rest of the region is that the Fifth Circuit also covers Franklin, Isle of Wight and Southampton, so the bench and the Commonwealth’s Attorneys you meet here work across a wider territory than a single city docket.
Timing matters more than sequence, and in a circuit spread over four jurisdictions it matters more than most — a setting you lose is not quickly replaced. Discovery requested early comes back as answers; requested late it comes back as another court date. And a witness twenty minutes down a farm road is findable this month and a disconnected number six months from now. None of it is complicated. It is only that it cannot be done in the wrong order.
Which is why the 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 on whether the job is genuinely in danger, and a list of what has to happen this week to protect the better end of it.
DECKER LAW IN SUFFOLK:
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 defending these charges in Hampton Roads courts
BEFORE THE FIRST SETTING
The useful days are the ones still in front of you. Free, confidential, any hour — 757-622-3317.