Austin Municipal Court "Warrant Amnesty" : February 9- March 4 2018

Austin Municipal Court Warrant Amnesty: February 9- March 4, 2018

We have come a long way in Austin in a very short time.  That is not to say that there is still not a great deal of progress to be made, but the work of several organizations and a progressive city government to reform how the criminal justice system treats poor people is paying off.

From what I can tell, Austin Municipal Court is no longer participating in the Great Texas Warrant RoundUp!! This is absolutely a step in the right direction for equity in justice.  The Warrant Roundup without a doubt unjustly targets poor people. 

What AMC is doing instead is what they are calling a “Warrant Amnesty”.  This is going on from February 9-March 4 2018.  What is interesting is that the City is calling this period an Amnesty – but it is absolutely true that you can walk into AMC or a substation at any time, 365 days (not including weekends or city holidays) and take care of warrants without being arrested.  I believe calling this time an amnesty is just to highlight what the court already does.  They are doing some community meetings too where you can discuss your case with judges and court staff.  Learn more about that here: http://www.austintexas.gov/article/warrant-amnesty-2018

HOWEVER!! You still need to understand what you are doing when you go “take care of” a warrant out of AMC during the Amnesty period.  Please read the following before you go:

I.                     Failure to Appear:  “Open” Tickets

You may have an “open ticket” (or more than one) in Austin Municipal Court.  If you receive a Class C ticket, and you fail to appear and it remains open, meaning no action has been taken since the issuance of the citation, in Austin a warrant will issue.  However, a great thing about AMC is that this court does not typically also charge defendants with a further Class C offense of Failure to Appear. You can be taken to jail on these “open ticket” warrants.  What happens when you are arrested for these kinds of warrants depends on the jurisdiction.  For an Austin Municipal Court ticket, you may be given the option of pleading guilty at magistration at the jail and agreeing to pay the ticket, or you may be given a court date if you plead not guilty and told to appear in Austin Municipal Court.

If you have Class C tickets that are “open”, there are several options on how to dispose of those and get the warrants cleared.  Some are better than others.  Here are some of them:

1)      You can always plead no contest and agree to pay.  During the Amnesty, and any other time, you can go to AMC or a substation and take care of it by paying it. There are drawbacks to this option of which you should be aware.  Simply telling a court staffer you want to plead guilty and pay the ticket waives any chance you have at negotiating the fine down with a court prosecutor.  You will pay the full amount plus some extra court costs for letting it go to warrant.  Secondly, depending on the charge, there may be collateral consequences for pleading no contest.  Pleading no contest to driving while license invalid, no drivers license, or failure to maintain financial responsibility where you already have one conviction could trigger a license suspension and will cause surcharges on your license to be assessed. If you did not have an eligible driver’s license at the time you got a moving violation, and you pay it, this could trigger a DPS departmental suspension of your license because you are admitting by paying the ticket and pleading no contest that you were driving without a license. 

The court is also now allowing defendants who can show they are indigent to file what’s called a “hardship” waiver.  This will ask the court to waive the fines and fees on the ticket. This could be a good option for cases that don’t carry collateral consequences if you just plead no contest and pay. 

If the court allows you, you can ask to speak with the judge or a prosecutor at walk-in docket.  At that point, you can ask for what’s called a “DEFERRED DISPOSITION”.  This allows you to avoid pleading guilty and being convicted of the offense --- which allows you TO AVOID COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES.  A deferral basically puts you under an unsupervised “probation” with the court where you promise not to get any new tickets for a period of time and pay the deferral fee.  You may also have to do driver’s safety course or some other kind of obligation (classes, community services, get a good license, get insurance, etc).  This keeps moving violations off your record (no points will be assessed), and for offenses that carry them, you can avoid license suspensions and surcharges.

2)      You can post bond with the court and put your case back on the docket.  This will allow you to speak with the prosecutors at a court date and negotiate to pay less and potentially keep it off your record, avoiding any collateral consequences that could come with a conviction. This may be an expensive undertaking as bond in some courts can be double the fine.

3)      You can hire an attorney to designate on your cases and put them back on the docket.  Usually this is done by sending a letter to the court in which the attorney says s/he’s going to be responsible for the case.  Once this happens, the warrant will be rescinded, and the attorney will appear in court for you, speak with the prosecutor in that court, and get a deal worked out for you.  Many times this deal will allow you to keep a conviction for the Class C off your record and will be cheaper to resolve than just simply paying the ticket. I am available to do this work across the state of Texas.

II.                   Commitment Warrants – Satisfying the Judgment

If you have a Class C warrant out in Austin Municipal Court and there has been a judgment -- ie, you have pled no contest or been convicted at trial – you have to pay or otherwise satisfy that judgment. If you do not, a “commitment” will issue.  This is a kind of warrant.  At that point the ticket is no longer “open”.  It is in “commitment” status.  That means you cannot change your mind under most circumstances and change what you agreed to pay or even that you agreed to pay.  Its done; you simply have to fulfill your obligation as agreed.

If you’ve already pled on your citation and have agreed to pay, but you cannot, you can sometimes go back to the court and ask to be put on a payment plan for an amount you can pay per month.  Often times this agreement will be enough for the court to rescind the warrant.  In some circumstances, you can ask the court to find you indigent and allow you to do community service at a non profit, non religious, non political charitable organization or you can ask for a HARDSHIP WAIVER.  If you are asking for a court to find you indigent, it is important to bring documentation to support your claim you are indigent.  Tax returns, pay stubs, or proof that you receive government assistance can help prove to the court that you are indigent. You can also get jail credit applied to these tickets if you have been to jail while these warrants were active – even if it is was not holding you or you were not arrested on these warrants specifically.  How much credit a day in jail will give you depends on the court.

Although Austin Municipal has made a very progressive change and is not participating in the Warrant Roundup, if you are walking/driving around Austin with Class C warrants out, you can still be taken to jail for these by APD if it is discovered (sometimes this happens during traffic stops, for example).  It is easier by far to take care of warrants prior to something like this which is usually a very inconvenient time to find out.   Don’t wait for that to happen. If you would like to speak with me regarding your Class C warrants, I am happy to do a free phone consultation to run down what your options are. 

ALSO PLEASE NOTE: Just because AMC is not doing Warrant RoundUp, some of the Constables Offices in Travis County ARE AND other jurisdictions are and can sometimes contract with a Travis County Constables Office to come get you (lots of the little jurisdictions in Williamson County, for example (think Thorndale, Taylor, Hutto, etc) do this).  Warrant RoundUp is still a huge thing in this state and you may not be completely safe just because AMC is not doing it. 

Reposting: Go to Court: The Consequences of Failing to Appear on Class C Misdemeanors

It is common in my work to come across clients who have outstanding warrants on Class C misdemeanors. Class C misdemeanors are the lowest level of misdemeanors in Texas; they are punishable by fine only and not jail. They include minor criminal offenses like Public Intoxication and Possession of Drug Paraphrenalia and all traffic offenses like speeding and failure to yeild right of way.

When you receive a citation or “ticket” for a Class C misdemeanor, you will get a court date on that citation for when you should either appear or contact the court and ask for options on how to resolve the case. If you wish to speak with a prosecutor about the case, which is a better option often times than simply pleading no contest and paying the fine, as I have explained elsewhere, you will get another court date on which to appear.

If you do not appear or make arrangements with the court to reolve the matter, there will be consequences that can adversely affect your life.

First, you will be charged with a second Class C misdmeanor of “Failure to Appear”. This is a negative consequence as it will be yet another citation you will have to resolve with the court. It may cost you more money as you may have to pay an additional fine.

Second, warrants will be issued for your arrest. If you ever have an encounter with law enforcement in that jurisdiction, you may be arrested on these warrants even though they are Class C misdemeanors. You may spend some time in jail on these charges even though they are not punishable by jail time. You may eventually be released with a court date or you may be ordered to “sit out” the fines if you plead guilty at magistration.

Now, these are the most obvious of the consequences. There are more that are far more obscure and less publicized and may surprise you.

If these tickets – both the original citation and the failure to appear – are entered in the OMNI database, you will be refused the ability to renew your driver’s license and register your vehicle, which could lead to more criminal citations like DWLI and expired registration. You will have to resolve these citations before you are allowed to renew your driver’s license and registation.

Resolving these citations may be more difficult if they get “old”. Fees, such as collection fees, may drive up what you owe. You will also be charged warrant and OMNI fees -- $50 warrant fee and $30 OMNI fee per ticket for a total of $80 – that must be paid when the tickets are resolved. You will often not be allowed to negotiate the fines and fees if the tickets are “old” and are in the OMNI database and/or are in collections. You will not be allowed a deferral. You will have to pay the amounts in full. The only way around this is to hire an attorney to post bonds and get these cases back on the docket, which will cost you money. 
It may seem like it is the best solution to just ignore your citations. You may feel like you don’t have the money to take care of them or the time. However, avoidance of the citations will lead to the situation getting much worse. If you cannot afford to pay a citation, you can perhaps ask for community service in leiu of payment. Don’t just put your head in the sand and expect the ctiations to go away – they won’t.

If you are struggling with outstanding warrants on Class C violations, OMNI holds, and the like, I am here to help. I can usually save clients money and time, and get them out of the morass of unpaid tickets. But what is even better is to take care of ctiations in a timely manner so you don’t need someone like me to fix it after it’s become an unsolvable problem.

Austin Municipal Court: The Difference Between "Commitments" and "Warrants"

Austin Municipal Court:  The Difference Between “Commitment” and “Warrant”

I get many, many calls about fixing tickets entered into the “Failure to Appear” database, formally called the OMNI database, because these tickets will inevitably jeopardize a person’s ability to drive legally in Texas.  Tickets entered into the database will not suspend your driving privileges, but it will keep you from renewing your license if you have one or prevent you from getting a regular license if you have not yet tested and been licensed. 

I will talk about Austin Municipal Court here, but the advice is generally applicable to all Class C tickets in the OMNI database. 

If you have tickets in OMNI from Austin Municipal Court, you should search for your ticket at www.austintexas.gov/department/municipal-court.  Look at what it says next to the ticket.  If it says “commitment”, it means you have already entered a plea on the ticket of “no contest”, been convicted, and have agreed to pay it. 

The problem with this is that in most cases, it is very difficult to re-negotiate an outcome on the case.  You are in most instances stuck with what you agreed upon and you are going to have to pay it before it gets taken out of OMNI.  If the conviction came with surcharges or a driver’s license suspension, you are probably stuck with it. 

A lawyer can do very little on these tickets except perhaps file a writ (that is extraordinary and you should not count on it being done or it being successful). Hiring a lawyer may really be a waste of resources.  What you should do is go down to the “walk in” or mitigation docket from 8 am to 11 am or 1pm to 3 pm at Austin Municipal Court and speak to the judge about a manageable payment plan. 

Other courts outside of City of Austin may not call these “commitments” but the outcome is the same – if you agreed to pay, you got convicted, and it’s a done deal.  To get them out of OMNI you have to pay.  Sometimes in small jurisdictions, where the procedures are not as tight, the judge may directly renegotiate with you but this is just a random occurrence that you should not count on. 

If your tickets say “warrant” next to them, there is more hope.  A “warrant” means that you never entered a plea and you can still avoid a conviction.  Do not go running down to the court and agree to pay.  Either hire an attorney to take over, or go down to court and ask to speak with the prosecutor.  You may not be allowed to do this without posting bond due to missing your first court date, but a judge may allow you to see a prosecutor.  It’s just going to depend on who is on the bench.  I have also seen judges offer deferred disposition at the walk -in docket.  However, in Austin, the ticket will need to be disposed of AND paid, if anything is owed, before it is taken out of OMNI.

So, to sum up, there are two ways things can end up in OMNI – either you agreed to pay and didn’t, which limits what you can do to get it out of OMNI, or you just never showed up and you have never entered a plea.  The second is much better and helps you avoid a multitude of collateral consequences.