Arrested in San Bernardino County: the first seventy-two hours.

It feels like the obvious move. You know you are not the person the report describes. You believe that if you simply lay out what actually happened, a reasonable officer will see the misunderstanding and this will stop. So you talk: in the patrol car, at the station, on the phone from custody, in a message to the other person involved.

That instinct is where a great many otherwise defensible cases are lost.

1. Stop talking about the case, everywhere

Officers are legally permitted to misrepresent the evidence they hold. They may say a witness identified you when none did, or that there is footage when there is not. This is lawful and it is routine, and it works because people under stress try to account for evidence that does not exist.

More importantly: a statement given in good faith becomes a fixed transcript. Memory under stress is unreliable in ordinary, innocent ways: you misremember a time by an hour, you say “two drinks” when it was three, you get the sequence of two events backwards. Months later, at trial, every one of those small errors is read back to a jury as an inconsistency. Not as a mistake. As evidence you were lying.

“Everywhere” is meant literally:

• Jail telephones are recorded and the recordings are routinely obtained by prosecutors. Every call except a properly placed call to your attorney.
• Messages are discoverable. Texts, WhatsApp and direct messages can all be subpoenaed and read aloud in court.
• Social media is evidence. Do not post about it. Equally, do not delete anything already posted: deletion after notice of a claim creates a spoliation problem considerably worse than the original post.
• Do not contact the complaining witness. Not to apologize, not to explain, not through a friend. If a protective order exists, contact is a fresh criminal offense. If none exists yet, contact can be charged as witness intimidation.

You may say, politely and without hostility: “I am going to remain silent, and I would like a lawyer.” Then say nothing further. Invoking that right cannot be used against you.

2. Write down everything, tonight

Your memory of this will be materially worse in a week and substantially worse in a month. While it is fresh, write it down for yourself, not for the police: the timeline, who was present, what was said and by whom, what you had to drink and when, where you had been, what the officers did and said, whether you were read your rights and at what point.

Note anything that may be recorded and will not survive: a business with cameras facing the street, a doorbell camera on a neighboring house, a rideshare receipt establishing where you were. Commercial surveillance systems commonly overwrite in thirty days or fewer. Footage that would have settled the question is routinely lost simply because nobody asked for it in time. A preservation letter sent in week one costs nothing and occasionally decides the whole case.

Mark the document “Prepared for my attorney” and give it to counsel rather than circulating it.

3. Find out exactly what is happening, and when

Look at the paperwork you were given. A citation or release form will state a date and a courthouse. In San Bernardino County that is most often the Rancho Cucamonga (West Valley) District courthouse on Haven Avenue, the San Bernardino Justice Center, or the Fontana, Victorville or Joshua Tree courthouses.

If you are in custody, arraignment must generally occur within 48 hours of arrest, excluding weekends and holidays. If you were released on a citation, the District Attorney has considerably longer to decide whether to file at all: up to the statute of limitations, which is a year for most misdemeanors. Hearing nothing for several weeks is normal and is not a signal either way.

Two separate deadlines catch people out badly:

• DUI: ten days. A DUI arrest triggers a DMV administrative proceeding entirely separate from the criminal case. You have ten days from the date of arrest to request a hearing. Miss it and your license is suspended automatically, regardless of what later happens in criminal court.
• Commercial and professional licenses. Many licensing bodies (nursing, teaching, real estate, contracting, commercial driving, alcoholic beverage) impose reporting obligations with short windows that begin at arrest or charge, not at conviction.

4. Think carefully before paying for bail

A bail bond premium is generally about ten percent of the bail amount and it is never refunded, whatever the outcome. On $50,000 bail that is $5,000 gone, even if the case is dismissed the following week.

Since the California Supreme Court’s decision in In re Humphrey, courts must consider ability to pay and non-financial conditions of release. A judge may release you on your own recognisance at arraignment with no payment at all. If arraignment is tomorrow, paying a large non-refundable premium tonight may buy a single night. If it is four days away, the arithmetic is different. Make one call before spending the money.

5. Engage counsel before charges are filed, not after

The most valuable window is the one most people skip. The arresting agency sends its package to the District Attorney, who then decides independently whether to file, and on what. Before that decision, defense counsel can sometimes submit mitigating material, correct a factual error in the report, or make the case for a lesser charge or a diversion referral.

It does not always work, and it is not always the right move. Sometimes contact simply attracts attention that would not otherwise have arrived. But where it does fit, it is the cheapest, fastest and quietest point at which a criminal case can end: before it ever becomes one.

Once charges are filed, the useful work is preservation letters, discovery requests, and the investigative steps that expire on a clock. All of it is better done in week one than in month three.

What not to worry about yet

An arrest is not a conviction, and the charge on the booking sheet is frequently not the charge that gets filed. Officers book on the most serious plausible offense; prosecutors file on what they can actually prove. Charges are regularly reduced, and are not filed at all more often than people expect.

The gap between the worst-case scenario you have been reading about at three in the morning and the realistic range of outcomes in your matter is usually very wide. Finding out which end of it you are actually on is what a consultation is for.