I have recently received an inquiry from our municipal judge as to how other municipalities handle citations when the defendant fails to appear. In particular, he wants to know if a defendant can be found guilty in absentia rather than issue a FTA warrant. Frankly, I’ve never researched the issue because I normally appear to conduct non-jury trials. Can someone point me in the right direction?

You cannot find them guilty absentia. There might be a good reason for the FTA such as in the hospital on the court date. You can forfeit their bond if they have posted a bond and close the case or also issue a FTA warrant. Ray -----Original Message----- From: Law office Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2023 10:11 AM To: oama@lists.imla.org Subject: [Oama] FTA Inquiry I have recently received an inquiry from our municipal judge as to how other municipalities handle citations when the defendant fails to appear. In particular, he wants to know if a defendant can be found guilty in absentia rather than issue a FTA warrant. Frankly, I’ve never researched the issue because I normally appear to conduct non-jury trials. Can someone point me in the right direction? -- Oama mailing list -- oama@lists.imla.org To unsubscribe send an email to oama-leave@lists.imla.org

They are presumed innocent. While there are consequences for failing to appear in Court, those don't include the equivalent of a default judgment. See 11 O.S. 27-117, 11 O.S. 27-117.1, 22 O.S. 1115.1(B), (D) and (E), 22 O.S. 1115.1A(B), (D) and (E), and 22 O.S. 1115.2. You issue a bench warrant and the reason is to authorize their arrest so that their appearance on the underlying citation can be compelled. But they will still be making their initial appearance on that underlying citation. This creates a couple of issues that are interrelated. Let's say the person ran a red light and then FTA's on the arraignment. We catch up with them a year later on the bench warrant and they come in and plead not guilty. Now we are setting the case for trial a year after the fact - the Officer's memory probably won't be what it would have been a year earlier and, moreover, it's probable that any dash and body cam video was not retained since it was a simple traffic violation and the video wasn't flagged due to the trial being set earlier. The other, interrelated issue is - what happens when the person FTA'ed for arraignment and it's MANY years later when we catch up with them (usually because they want to get their DL unsuspended). The Officer is retired, moved away or even dead. This leads to the question - and a question I'd be curious to hear how others have dealt with it - how long do you hold open unadjudicated tickets? At some point the passage of time would render it near impossible to successfully prosecute the citation if it went to Trial. Do any of you end up withdrawing your hold on their DL and purging the ticket or do you hang onto them as open cases for years and even decades? I'm just talking about unadjudicated tickets here. Matt On Thu, May 11, 2023 at 10:11 AM Law office <bradcarterlawoffice@gmail.com> wrote: > I have recently received an inquiry from our municipal judge as to how > other municipalities handle citations when the defendant fails to appear. > In particular, he wants to know if a defendant can be found guilty in > absentia rather than issue a FTA warrant. Frankly, I’ve never researched > the issue because I normally appear to conduct non-jury trials. > > Can someone point me in the right direction? > > > > -- > Oama mailing list -- oama@lists.imla.org > To unsubscribe send an email to oama-leave@lists.imla.org >