What do your magistrates do when a person is arrested on an out-of-county warrant with a pre-set bond amount and wants to bond out without being magistrated? Even if the defendant wanted a court appointed attorney, the magistrate could not appoint an attorney in the county where the warrant was issued. Do you simply refer the defendant to the magistrate who issued the warrant to get a court-appointed attorney?

Since my small-county magistrates only magistrate prisoners at 9:00 am each morning, I have thought about simply allowing a defendant arrested on an out-of-county warrant with a pre-set bond amount to bond out and be given written Art. 15.17 warnings and an instruction to contact the magistrate who issued the warrant to request a court-appointed attorney, if one is desired.

Your thoughts?

I'm torn. The law wants arrestees to get this info from a judge, not a deputy, not a slip of paper. (I bet a bunch of them can't read anyway, and quite a few can't read English). At the same time, the law desires that these guys be admitted to bail as quickly as possible. When faced with a similar issue recently, I chose making sure the defendant saw a judge rather than seeing daylight sooner. It seemed less likely to end in a lawsuit and more likely to quickly identify "that's not me" type arrests.

Our officers used to give violators who had an active traffic warrant or a class C FTA warrant the option of either appearing before a magistrate or paying the pre-set fine or bond set on the warrant. However, we discontinued the practice when couple of judges and the legal counsel for a judicial education center objected to the practice on the basis that CCP article 15.17 requires that a person arrested under a warrant be taken before a magistrate.

Janette A