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Pocono News Section
Avoiding Arrest in Schuylkill County
Avoiding Arrest in Schuylkill County - Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1:07PM EST
Reported by: Mike Trim
Friday, Apr 11, 2008 @01:07pm EST
The Schuylkill County District Attorney's Office gave amnesty to nearly everyone with a bench warrant arrest if they showed up at the courthouse Friday morning. Nearly 40 people did. That's out of about 200 bench warrants on the books in Schuylkill county.
A bench warrant is when a judge issues an order for your arrest. Friday morning, people walked in and out of one Schuykill County courtroom, to clear a bench warrant, and, as Gary Weiser of Pottsville put it, "Keep me out of jail, you know. That's the bottom line."
Weiser had a bench warrant issued for a minor drug charge. Taking care of it Friday morning means he'll avoid paying thousands in bail money if he was arrested.
District attorney James Goodman says he coordinated this apparent amnesty day to lessen the load at the court house and jail. Goodman says, "We don't have to put these people in jail and we can kind of speed up the system. Most of these cases, they're a lot of bad check cases and a lot of minor charges."
But not every charge was minor. A few were taken to jail. Goodman says the most serious bench warrant cleared Friday was for an aggravated assault charge.
But most, like David Fitting's warrants, were minor. Fitting says he thought he cleared a minor theft charge last year. "That's the last time I heard about it. They said they actually had a warrant out for my arrest since 2007. So I'm glad I got it taken care of," says Fitting.
Goodman called Friday morning productive, and says it will help shift focus from minor warrants to major cases. Most people that turned themselves in today skipped jail, but still had court dates set to finalize their cases. | | |
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