A CHESAPEAKE NATIVE WHO USED TO PROSECUTE
Joseph Rigney grew up here. He spent part of his career as a prosecutor before he spent it defending people, and he now tries civil and criminal cases across all seven Hampton Roads cities. This is the one he is from. That is not sentiment — it means the streets in your file are streets he knows, and the way this courthouse actually runs is something he learned from the other side of it.
He is not alone in that history. George Neskis spent four years as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney, and 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. That is a practical advantage, not a relational one.
What it buys you is specific. Knowing which files the Commonwealth is quietly unsure of. What a reduction usually takes here. How a General District morning genuinely unfolds on the day you were told to show up, and how much of that day you should expect to spend waiting. Cole has put charges from assault and battery through to murder in front of juries, and a prosecutor who expects a trial handles a file differently from one who expects a plea.
WHAT WE BRING TO A CHESAPEAKE FILE
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A CHESAPEAKE ARREST
Most people who call us have never done this and have no picture of what comes next. Broadly: a magistrate decides bond, an arraignment follows in the General District Court, and after that either a trial date in that court or — if the charge is a felony — a preliminary hearing to decide whether the matter is certified to a grand jury and sent up to the Circuit Court.
What matters more than the sequence is the timing. A bond argument is a different animal prepared than assembled at the podium. A witness reached in March remembers the evening; reached in August, they remember being asked about it. And the record built in the lower court is read in the higher one, which means the early appearances are not warm-ups for the real thing. They are part of it.
So the reason to call early rather than late is not urgency for its own sake. It is that the things worth doing have to be done while there is still a stage in front of them. Nobody here will only tell you what you want to hear about a charge — but on the first call you will hear the realistic range of outcomes, and what has to happen this week to protect the better end of it.
DECKER LAW IN CHESAPEAKE:
DEFENDING CLIENTS SINCE 1961
-
41,000+
criminal clients represented firmwide since 1995
-
4
years one of our attorneys spent as a prosecutor
-
65+
years defending these charges in Hampton Roads courts
THE EARLY DAYS ARE THE USABLE ONES
Bring us the charge while something can still be done with it. Free, confidential, any hour — 757-622-3317.