On bail
Submitted by TBL on 2002-12-16 11:56:10, Monday
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On bail Several days ago, I took all the advice y’all gave me and took a chance and got my half-brother an attorney as well as bailed him out. Not only am I out a large sum of money, I am personally responsible to ensure he appears at court as well as comply with the terms set by the bails bondsman. I will be so pissed if he screws me. Picking him up after bonding was a trip. The jailers won’t advise you when they plan to release or help you in any manner. I sat in my car outside the jail in the pouring rain for six hours. Sad, though they released over a hundred people that night, only five other prisoners had family waiting. They are not charging him with anything related to sex but rather violence. From what I understand this is at least the second time for this sort of thing. At first, all I did was get him a lawyer, public defenders suck. I wasn’t going to bail him out, as I survived a violent crime and knowing his propensity towards threatening violence. To me it was about time he learned that violence is wrong. The last time the only price he paid was a fine. And there is speculation that while living in another part of the country he got in to trouble for the same crap. After the lawyer told me how many years in prison my half-brother could get in this case, I realized to mount a proper defense; he needed to be out on bail. If guilty he should serve a sentence so this should not happen again. But the sentence should be reasonable, and not many years. The looming sentence is ridiculous. Some murderers don’t serve much longer. I felt good about bailing him out. Then while we were discussing the crime he didn’t understand what he did wrong. He should have not resorted to violence. There were other reasonable options. His life was not threatened or in danger at all. But to him, violence solves everything and he maintained to me he should not have done anything different. Yikes. My family understands why I helped out this half although they think I should have left him in jail. The problem is I am so depressed after he claimed his actions were justified. Now I am not sure I really understand why I bailed him out. My meddling may have been the wrong thing if he won’t understand what he did was terribly wrong. Time will only tell. |
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