I would suggest you the following as soon as you find a defect...

1) Confirm whether the finding is actually a defect (refer to Req. Doc) and make sure it is not a duplicate.

2) Try to reproduce in another testing machine... (sometimes defect occur due to session issues, which might have been treated as a different defect)

3) Justify that it is a defect by refering to the Req. Doc. Screenshots & logs would be helpful to save the time in reproducing the defect.

And bug life cycle should be altogether a different question.

-- Danny