Bench Warrant Dismissal in Atlanta Municipal Court
Yesterday I was in Fulton County getting a case dismissed. Today I was just up the street in Atlanta Municipal Court securing a dismissal on a different, though nonetheless important, type of matter: a Failure to Appear and Bench Warrant.
I have written at length about Failures of Appear and Bench Warrants, but essentially, they are just what they sound like: when a person fails to appear for court, the judge may issue a bench warrant. That warrant goes out to all police agencies, so if that person is stopped for a traffic ticket or otherwise comes into contact with the police, he or she will be arrested rather than merely ticketed. For obvious reasons, this is a major problem. The arrested person must sit in jail until he or she can be bailed out, he or she may miss work, etc.
Another consequence of a FTA warrant is that the person’s driver’s license is suspended, another major inconvenience.
For these reasons, if you think you might have a bench warrant for missing a court date, you should call an attorney ASAP. If you are proactive about it rather than waiting to be arrested or for your license to be suspended, your attorney may be able to do what I did today: appear in court on your behalf and get the bench warrant lifted.
