I have an attorney from Tennessee who has asked for my help in a murder case in his jurisdiction. One of the witnesses is currently living in my county, and has dodged service of process for him. They are now going to seek a material witness warrant and have her arrested and taken back to Tennessee. I've never encountered this, and don't know if it would even fly here, given the limitations that Texas has on writs of attachment.

So, my questions:

Has anyone helped on one of these before, and have words of advice?

If a warrant is issued by the Tennessee court, can my officers go serve it and arrest her?

If she's arrested, how do we get her there? Waiver of extradition? What if she won't waive?

Any advice is appreciated.

Might just have to end up doing an out of state subpoena service. I'm not sure at all about arresting on an attachment warrant issued by an out of state court.

I've had to do them for out-of-state prosecutor's offices on a couple of occasions. There is really not much to it.

They will send you a Request and Application for Out of State Witness Subpoena and a Certificate for Out of State Witness Subpoena.

Basically you take those and attach them to a Motion for Issuance of an Order for Hearing and have the Order served on the witness located in your jurisdiction. There are some procedural hurdles to jump through--but at the end of the day the local court issues an order directing them to appear and testify at a time and date certain in the out of state court.

I've got some forms if that would help.

The act is contained in Article 24.28 of the CCP.

Thanks to Robert for the documents he provided me; still need a few more, though:

I have received properly completed "Motion for Issuance of Subpoena To An Out of State Witness", "Request to Issue Summons", etc. under CCP 24.28 from an ADA in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for a double-murder witness who lives in my County.

I have done a few of these in the past 9 years, but now can't find any of my forms. If anyone has a template or example of the "Waiver of Hearing" and/or the actual Subpoena, please e-mail to me at brent.robbins@dentoncounty.com

Again - I am not trying to get a witness from out of State; I am helping a Louisiana ADA get a witness from my County here in Texas.

Thanks

An article in the just-off-the-presses issue of The Texas Prosecutor journal just might help. It's not in your mailboxes yet, but here it is online: http://www.tdcaa.com/journal/s...-out-state-witness-0.

Kevin Petroff in Galveston County wrote it, so he'd be a good resource if you need more help than the article provides.

I love it when a Prosecutor article is so timely. That editor lady must be pretty smart.