Most people arrested in Broomfield County or Adams County assume that the bail amount assigned to their case is etched in stone. But is it? Does the accused have to accept the bail amount or can they ask the bail bond agent to have it lowered? First of all, the bondsman cannot change the amount of bail. But the courts can and sometimes do because of a line in the 8th amendment which states “excessive bail shall not be required”.

Those six words were added to the Bill of Rights in order to prevent the type of abuse that was common in the English system that much of US law is based on. Bail had been part of the English criminal justice system since 1275, but for centuries the powers that be abused that system by shouldering defendants they didn’t like with bail amounts they could never pay. The 8th amendment was designed to prevent that from happening here. So the answer to the question is: Yes, you can ask for lower bail.

Courts in Colorado take domestic violence cases extremely seriously. These are some of the most complex cases imaginable as they involve the competing rights of the aggrieved party to live their life free of the threat of violence, stalking and other types of abuse, and the right of the accused to the presumption of innocence. Unfortunately, as any experienced bail agent can attest, domestic violence cases are all too common and courts often place a variety of extraordinary conditions on the release of the accused.

Below we will look at the process the court goes through when determining whether a person accused of domestic violence should be released on bail, and what conditions they may apply to the person’s release.