If you agreed on keeping an engagement with a loved one but didn’t show up, how do you think they would feel? What about a boss? Let’s take it even further and insert a judge’s title in the formatted question. Failure to appear in court is a serious matter and can happen in any event that there is a summons to court for any reason; the more informed one is, the more likely they are to understand or even prevent the occurrence from happening.
The Superior Court of California lists that a failure to appear in Court due to a traffic ticket will result in a $300 dollar fine. Furthermore, if one chooses not to continually appear in court, the fine will go up by another $300 dollars each time. Judges who have municipal jurisdiction in Tennessee have the ability to not only sentence a small fee of ten dollars for a failure to appear, but to evoke the right of jail time for a small time period (not exceeding five days) pending each case of failure to appear.
If summoned for a court appearance, the defendant may write to the court in order to plead guilty of the charges, which, results in a dismissal of a court appearance. Yet, should the defendant not write to the court or accordingly show up for the court date, a Failure to appear can end in the issuing of a warrant for the offender’s arrest.
The Massachusetts Jury system put a law into order in 1996 for the purpose of increasing a wide arena of different people as Jurors. When doing this, they also implemented a new law to punish those who did not show up for jury duty or even those who responded to the summons, but had a failure to appear for jury duty. It started out with a few districts, but has gradually expanded. According to the Office of Jury commissioner, they sent out 24,446 failures to appear notices from the end of the year until February in 1999.
Accordingly, Washington State Department of Licenses has been known to revoke a license when there is a failure to appear in court over the issue of a ticket fine or even in the event to pay one. It can also escalate to the point of a suspended license. If a person posts bail for a defendant in jail they enter into an agreement with the court to make sure the defendant shows up in court. If the defendant fails to show up in court, the bail money is confiscated accordingly and the standard charge of a bigger fine is commenced as well as prison time. Depending on the judge, one or both charges may be submitted as a sentence
In Connecticut, Westport News recently reported that the police pulled over a man who had no license plate on the front of his car. What they found were charges including a warrant for his arrest due to his failure to appear in court based on charges from the Westport vehicles. It was also found that he had a failure to appear in court for two more counts issued by the Stratford police due to more vehicle charges. A failure to appear due to ignorance of the state laws does not have to happen to you though.
Many different states list their requirements for changing a court date on their government websites. For instance, the City of Milwaukee determines that the submission for change of one’s court date needs to be five business days beforehand. For a trial, ten business days are needed. In California, the California Judicial Branch states that a postponement or a continuance must also be requested ten days to the very least before the court date. They also have separate stipulations if the request is needed later than the ten day mark. If so, there is a ten dollar filing fee. So don’t let a lack of knowledge or information about the consequences surprise you – visit your state’s website.
