Our County Clerk has informed our County Judge that her Criminal Division will no longer pull and mail Criminal dockets or send out notices of Court dates to defendants, bondsmen and attorneys. Does the Clerk have the authority to do this? Our research as produced one case from that states a District Judge may hold a Clerk in contempt for failing to mail out notices and an Attorney General's Opinon stating that the Court or Clerk must send out notices. We are also familiar with CCP 28.01. However, they still do not answer our question. Has anyone had this problem? Does anyone have a solution?

Depends on how hostile your judge or judges are at this time and how willing they are to work with you. A simple order establishing a rule for the local court(s) entered and sent to all attorneys and bondsmen in the local area and provided to each defendant on release from jail by the sheriff:

All criminal cases are set every day the courthouse is open which shall include every Monday through Friday that is not a national holiday where the post office is closed! All parties (defendant, defense lawyer and prosecutor) are required to be present at 8:30 AM to to check the list posted on the District/County Attorney's Office door of cases where parties need to be present in court at 9 AM. Defendants who do not appear in court as required will have their bonds forfeited and a capias will issue. Attorney's who do not appear need to be prepared to show cause upon notice from the court.

Instanter bonds solve the problem for prosecutors. The DA/County Attorney will get the settings as they are announced in open court or as by rule for the preliminary hearings. I know of nothing that requires that notice come from the clerk of the court to be valid - notice from the Court has to be sufficient. If a Judge tells a defendant to be in court at a particular time, no notice need issue from a mere clerk for sanctions to be available. Then let the politcal process work?

You will get a lot of failure to appear cases which are often easier to prosecute than the case in chief. Maybe the bondsmen and/or defense bar will lift this terrible burden from the Clerk(or seek the removal if the AG opinion or law will support it)?

Less brutal but still worth thinking about is for the prosecutor's office to send notice to all bondsmen that a current list of settings will be maintained in the prosecutor's office and that if they chose not to check it every day, they should be prepared to defend the bond forfeiture action with why they didn't see fit to find out the settings. The typical bond doesn't say the bondsman is liable only if he gets notice and the defendant doesn't appear. It says that he will be liable if the defendant doesn't appear as required. Otherwise a bondsman could escape all liabilty by merely throwing away every letter he gets from the clerk. A similar notice to be provided to each prisoner released from jail could be considered. Let the Court deal with the officers of the court, i.e. defense lawyers.

Good luck.

Our Sheriff's office has a list of court dates for arraignment, selects a date for court that gives my office sufficient time to receive the file, prepare the complaint and information, and file them in the county court, and puts the court date on the bond. No further notice is given. If there is an out-of-county bond, my office sends a letter to the defendant and bond company informing them of the court date. A copy of this letter is filed with the clerk. This procedure gives everyone a lot of advance notice as to the court date and eliminates the need to send out dockets at all.