Explaining the three types of warrants

Speaker 1
00;00;00;01 – 00;00;01;06
Hi, everyone. Having a warrant out for your arrest, or a warrant issued to search your property, can be very stressful. Today, we’re going to talk about the three types of warrants. This is Christina Williams, with Just Criminal Law.
Speaker 2
00;00;13;25 – 00;00;15;00
And David Mann, legal storytelling specialist. All right. So we’ve all sort of seen these on TV. You know, search warrants, arrest warrants. What are the three types?
Speaker 1
00;00;22;01 – 00;00;23;15
Well, like you said, a search warrant is when law enforcement believes that there’s evidence of a crime at your house, or in your car, or you know, perhaps your DNA. So they want a warrant for your person, your property. And they go and ask the judge for a warrant and the judge looks for the reasons that they want one. And if they agree, the judge will sign the warrant and your stuff will get searched. So, that’s a search warrant. The other type of warrant is a bench warrant, and that’s issued right from the judge’s bench and straight from the judge. Nobody’s asked for it it, but if you’ve failed to do something, say, while you’re on probation or you didn’t come to court when you were supposed to, the judge will issue a bench warrant for your arrest. And the third type of warrant is just your run-of-the-mill arrest warrant. When law enforcement believes that you’ve committed a crime, they put forth information that established probable cause in paperwork, that you’ve committed a crime and they’ll ask the judge to sign an arrest warrant. So those are the three different types of warrants.
Speaker 2
00;01;39;19 – 00;01;41;16
Okay. So so how does this work, then? Again, I kind of talk about TV and movies where it seems like they have, like, a piece of paper that they hand you or something. How does a warrant work?
Speaker 2
00;01;50;12 – 00;01;51;06
Well. The warrant becomes active in the system when the judge signs off on it. And then law enforcement, it gets entered into a computer. And depending on if it’s a felony or a misdemeanor, for example; a felony warrant goes across state lines, goes across the entire country. And if you get pulled over, say for a speeding ticket, and you have this active arrest warrant with you or that’s against you, then you’re immediately brought into custody. And it doesn’t matter if you’re five states away from the county where the warrant was issued, or five blocks from the jail. You’re going straight to jail. Now, if you’re out of state, it’s really going to be cumbersome and it can take, you know, weeks to get back to the county that issued the warrant. So if you suspect you have a warrant, it’s always a good idea to get an attorney involved.
Speaker 2
00;02;54;19 – 00;02;55;02
Right. Because at that point, a lot of things are going to start happening that maybe you, the citizen, don’t really understand how to deal with. And even though you think, ‘Oh yeah, I can handle this on my own,’ you probably can’t. So what is the upside? What’s the benefit, then, of hiring an attorney at that point?
Speaker 1
00;03;13;29 – 00;03;15;04
Well, we’ll help the person figure out how to deal with the warrants. So we do several different things for the client. Now, if we find out yes, in fact, they do have an active arrest warrant and they hire us, we will ask the prosecutor and the court to consider squashing the warrant and giving us a court date and we’ll just show up, voluntarily, at court You know, this prevents a lot of paperwork and hassle on the part of law enforcement and the jail. And so, a lot of time we’re able to do that for the client, which is much more convenient than being arrested. Now, if they suspect there’s an arrest warrant and they want to turn themselves in and take care of it, not wait, you know, for a traffic stop, that’s what we advise as well. And, you know, another tip is don’t turn yourself in at noon on a Friday if you have an active warrant, because the judge probably isn’t going to see you then until Monday. So you’re going to spend the entire weekend in jail. And then, another piece of advice: Don’t turn yourself in on Monday morning because all the people that were arrested over the weekend are going to go first and you might be held over until the next day. So we try to make it as convenient as possible to handle the warrant and get the case started. And get a low bond for our clients.
Speaker 2
00;04;43;19 – 00;04;45;04
Yeah, that’s really sounds like, you know, a big piece of what someone is hiring you to do, is to have really good judgment about how to handle a situtation like that which, of course, you know, the ordinary person doesn’t necessarily have, because they don’t have that kind of experience. So if someone is looking for that kind of judgment and expertise, and wants to get ahold of you, how might they do that?
Speaker 1
00;05;05;01 – 00;05;07;15
Right. We’ll include a link in the description where they can call, text, or chat with a member of my team, any time, day or night. Here at Just Criminal Law, we know you only get one shot at justice. So make yours count.