Garland County District Court announced Friday that if people who owe fines from years past pay up before the end of the month, they can avoid collection efforts, fines or jail.
Targeted in what the court called "an amnesty program" are more than 19,000 warrants covering more than 500,000 cases and about $18 million in outstanding fines dating to 1991, the court said.
Otherwise, the court said, it will get "tough" with people who don't pay. The court also said it wants payment in full and in person. But it also said that it would be willing to consider payment options if someone can't pay.
"Upon conclusion of the amnesty period, no further consideration will be given," the release said. "The Court intends to get tough with outstanding fines. Individuals with warrants need to come in and take care of their business so authorities do not have to come looking for you."
[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]
The release was issued Friday afternoon, after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported this week that there had been a significant increase in failure-to-pay warrants issued in Hot Springs -- some dating back more than 20 years.
Over the past nine months, the court in the city of fewer than 38,000 residents has issued more than 3,600 of the warrants, 1,140 in the first 14 days of April alone.
By comparison, according to records on the AOC Court Connect public website, Pulaski County District Court issued 491 failure-to-pay warrants on the Little Rock city docket from Jan. 1 to April 14, and Craighead County District Court issued 386 such warrants during the same time period on the Jonesboro city docket, for a combined 877 warrants. Little Rock has a population of 199,579, according to U.S. Census Bureau 2020 population estimates. Jonesboro's population is an estimated 78,152.
Friday's announcement said that Garland County District Court is implementing a "misdemeanor warrant Amnesty Program for people who have failed to appear in court or failed to comply with a court order."
In an interview Friday, Little Rock defense attorney Michael Kaiser characterized the amnesty program as more of a bait and switch, saying the offer didn't actually give amnesty for anything, requiring instead that people pay their fines or fulfill their jail-time commitments on other warrants, if any were outstanding, while not spelling that out.
"I think calling this an amnesty program is generous," Kaiser said. "I appreciate the honesty of this document because I think it shows this court as a revenue generator rather than a court of law and justice."
District Judge Joe Graham said Friday that he had been considering making such a move since before the coronavirus pandemic shut down a significant portion of the nation's economy and said he had considered rolling it out for some time.
"It was not necessarily in response to [the article]," Graham said. "We'd been thinking about something for some time with regard to the failure to appears and the failure to complies, things that traditionally when you get cited for you have to bond out."
Graham said the risk of introducing the coronavirus into the jail population was the impetus behind the issuance of the warrants, which he said did not require offenders to be jailed, but he said other types of warrants that did carry requirements related to bond, fines, or jail time, if in effect, could be enforced.
"Failure to comply with previous court orders for not doing what your probation required or for not doing something that the court ordered you to do, not including the payment of fines," he said, "But I thought since there had been some press about those failure-to-pays, why not just let them come down, you know, clearly if you've got the money to pay it off, it all goes away.
"And, if not, just come down and get your citation and we'll get you a court date."
The offer of amnesty, Graham said, would apply to the warrants issued for failure to appear or failure to comply, but that the failure-to-pay warrants would continue to be enforced.
"These warrants would have been issued and the bonds would have already been attached, which means they would have been arrested and would have to have posted bond," he said. "This gives those people the chance to come in and get a citation and a court date the way you would with a failure-to-pay, without having to go to the jail and post bond."
Little Rock defense attorney Bill James said in an interview that the measure appeared to him to be a better situation than in past years, when he said Garland County sometimes did not give defendants the opportunity to pay bond to get out of jail. He said his concern about how the district courts operate has to do as much with financial concerns as legal.
"My concern," he said, "is that people get into financial situations where they can't get out of it, it's just a rotating failure to pay, they get fined, it becomes an overwhelming debt they can't pay, that's my biggest concern."
James said, however, that those fines that are legitimately owed to the courts should be paid.
"Honestly, if you owed the fines and they give you a citation and you're not arrested for it, I'm not personally that offended by it," he said. "If you owe the fine, you owe the fine, and it's probably something you should have dealt with, and if that's the situation, it is what it is."
Court officials said in Friday's announcement that people who have failed to appear in court or failed to comply with a court order may appear in person at the court clerk's office at 607 Ouachita Ave., Room 150, in Hot Springs by 4 p.m. on May 1. They will receive citations to appear with new court dates to handle the failure-to- appear notices and underlying charges before the court without having to post bond or go to jail.
State Desk on 04/18/2020