{"id":95645,"date":"2019-02-13T17:47:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T00:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-would-create-text-reminders-for-court-hearings\/"},"modified":"2019-02-13T17:47:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T00:47:26","slug":"bill-would-create-text-reminders-for-court-hearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-would-create-text-reminders-for-court-hearings\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill would create text reminders for court hearings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Montezuma
Montezuma County Combined Courts is located at 865 N. Park St. A proposed bill could create a text message program to remind criminal defendants in Colorado of upcoming court hearings.<\/span>The Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A Colorado Senate committee has advanced a bill that would enact a text message program to remind criminal defendants of upcoming court hearings, but Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin is unsure how much it could help local defendants.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone of these defendants who don\u2019t show up have a cell phone, so I don\u2019t know how that\u2019s going to work,\u201d Nowlin said.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday voted unanimously to advance SB19-036 \u2013 called the State Court Administrator Reminder Program \u2013 to the Appropriations Committee.<\/p>\n

If passed, the bill would require the state court administrator to administer the court reminder program for district, county and municipal courts that use the judicial department\u2019s case management system.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s summary states the goal is to \u201csignificantly reduce the number of defendants who are committed to the custody of a county jail solely as a result of their failure to appear in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a Journal analysis of incident reports from Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office and Cortez Police Department, MCSO served at least 50 warrants for failure to appear from November through January, and CPD has served at least 31. These numbers are likely low because officers frequently do not always list the type of warrant in arrest reports.<\/p>\n

Cortez Police Department Lt. Andy Brock said the failure-to-appear warrants make up the majority of warrants Cortez police serve.<\/p>\n

On traffic stops, Brock said officers always check for warrants, and the department distributes a warrant list to officers on a weekly basis. Officers with some downtime might read through the list and go look for defendants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you know where somebody works or hangs out, you\u2019ll drive by those places,\u201d Brock said. \u201cSometimes you go by residences, and then sometimes you catch other people in cars. A lot of times, birds of a feather kind of flock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nowlin said deputies are out looking for people with warrants \u201cevery day and night.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the technology issue, Nowlin said deputies often encounter defendants who have a phone but haven\u2019t topped up their account and therefore cannot receive texts. Or defendants might buy a new phone with a new phone number, which can be hard to track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to see how it works,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may be better for other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s language states that the court administrator would prioritize text messages unless \u201ca more effective\u201d means to remind defendants becomes available. If a defendant cannot receive text messages, the court administrator could use a phone call, email or other \u201cinternet-based technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courts would be required to send at least two reminder text messages to criminal defendants. If a defendant misses a hearing, the court would send an alert informing the defendant that a warrant has been issued.<\/p>\n

The bill would affect district, county and municipal courts. Nowlin said there generally aren\u2019t too many failure-to-appear warrants out of district court, which mostly handles felonies, but they see a lot of those warrants in the smaller municipal court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the ones who are a revolving door,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to a press release from bill sponsor Sen. Pete Lee, a Democrat from Colorado Springs, the reminder program would improve the fairness of the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

\u201cPassing this bill out of committee is an important step to reform our criminal justice system,\u201d Lee stated. \u201cI look forward to getting it across the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n

sdolan@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

officers served at 80 least warrants for missed hearings in three months<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-95645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95645"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=95645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}