Posted: May 21, 2024
Rules of Criminal Procedure – Comment Period Closes July 5, 2024
URCrP009A. Amend. The Utah Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure recently amended Rule 9A to include procedures related to defendants in custody on a bench warrant based on a failure to appear for a court proceeding. Once notified that a defendant has been arrested on a bench warrant, a court must set a bench hearing date following the defendant’s arrest. The amended Rule provides the timeframe in which the court must first schedule the bench hearing and the timeframe in which the court must hold the bench hearing. The Rule is approved for a 45-day public comment period.
Lines 17-18 should be their own paragraph or subsection with a description similar but opposite to lines 13-15 for clarity.
How soon after the arrest or the custody of a defendant “must” a court set the hearing?
As written this is vague.
Bench warrants are different from arrest warrants. The issuing court should have the opportunity to determine whether and under what conditions a Defendant should be released because that judge has the context and history with that Defendant. When that kind of information is available, wading into the uncertainty of risk evaluations with a new judge seems ill-advised.
To make someone wait up to 14 days (or even 30, if arrested in another county) before being seen by the court on a bench warrant seems extraordinarily excessive, particularly as district court warrants are usually non-bailable, clients often miss court inadvertently, and most of these RBW hearings are now happening by Webex anyway. There is no good reason why the time from arrest to hearing should not be the same as it is for other arrests. This should be amended to give the warrant-issuing Court 48 hours to set conditions on release, or require a hearing within 7 days of arrest to address the custody status on no-bail holds.