TWO OF OUR ATTORNEYS
ONCE SAT ON THE OTHER SIDE
George Neskis served four years as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney. Cole Roberts started out as a public defender. Between the two of them they have seen a case charged, screened and worked up long before it ever landed on a defense desk.
That is a practical advantage, not a relational one. It amounts to knowing which files the Commonwealth is privately uneasy about, what a reduction generally takes in this court, how the General District morning actually proceeds on the day you have been told to attend, and how much of that day you will spend sitting.
We take misdemeanors and felonies through the Virginia Beach General District Court, the Circuit Court, and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court — from the bond hearing to a jury’s verdict. Cole has put charges from assault and battery through to murder in front of juries, and that alters the calculation on a file. A prosecutor anticipating a trial treats a case differently from one anticipating a plea.
WHAT THAT IS WORTH TO YOU
WHAT FOLLOWS AN ARREST
IN VIRGINIA BEACH
Most people who contact us have never done this before and have no clear picture of what comes next. In short: an arrest here usually means a magistrate’s bond decision, then an arraignment in the General District Court, and after that either a trial date in that court or — where the charge is a felony — a preliminary hearing to determine whether the matter is certified to a grand jury and passed up to the Circuit Court.
In front of every one of those stages sits a period in which something useful can be done, and every one of those periods closes. Filing the discovery request. Arriving with a bond argument prepared rather than assembled at the podium. Reaching a witness while the recollection is still reliable. The one thing that cannot be done is recovering the time afterwards.
Which is the entire reason to call before the first hearing rather than after it. Nobody at this firm will tell you what you would like to hear about a charge — but on that first call you will be told the realistic range of outcomes, and what has to be done this week to protect the better end of it.
IN VIRGINIA BEACH
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41,000+
criminal clients represented since 1995
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2
offices in the city, on Haygood Road and in Kempsville
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65+
years practicing in Hampton Roads courts
THE USEFUL DAYS ARE THE EARLY ONES
Bring us the charge early enough that something can be done with it. Free, confidential, any hour — 757-622-3317.