Q: Hello, my Fiancé has a history of a felony. He served all of his time, no parole. Last year he was charged with a new
felony. We drive to court out of state every 2-4 weeks for the past 11 months. He has not missed a court date! The out of state case has not gone to trial, and his attorney is still waiting on full discovery.
A few weeks ago, he was arrested and charged, in our home state with being near a weapon. He has a $60k bail with conditions and EHM. He informed the judge here that he needs to attend court in the other state off and on when scheduled. His lawyer in the other state verified that info for our home state. The Judge ruled that if he leaves home to go to court in the other state that our state would issue a warrant. The paperwork from EHM does not prevent him from having furloughs. The EHM folks asked and his probation officer approved his furlough for court. Then EHM said to have his PD ask any Judge to sign off on the furlough. The PD states this Judge doesn't bend but didn’t ask other Judges. There will be a warrant if he does or doesn't go. What can we do? Thank you.
A: Typically, it is the judge assigned to the case that decides whether the conditions of release are going to be modified. His attorney cannot "judge shop" for a more favorable decision from a different judge. Your fiancé has a difficult decision to make here. It seems as if he will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. I would suggest having the out-of-state attorney reach out to the court there and notify the court about the situation. Perhaps he can arrange for hearings via Zoom or perhaps they would continue their hearings until the Minnesota case is resolved so that neither case ends up with a warrant.
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A: This is the type of problem that the defendant's attorneys should work on solving. In general, judges want defendants to make their court appearances, even in other jurisdictions. If necessary, one idea would be for the attorney to schedule a motion to modify sentence before the judge, then at the hearing request an amendment to approve attending court appearances out of state, as monitored by probation.
1 user found this answer helpful
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