Millions of arrests on out-of-state warrants per year seems like an exaggeration, so I’ll request a cite for curiosity.
~Max
This is sort of true. In order to detain you, the police have to have a basis of reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed and that you have some pertinent information or involvement in the purported crime. However, the police have broad powers to detain and the threshold for reasonable suspicion can just be, “I think you were in proximity and know something.” Detainment is supposed to be “brief” and strictly for the purposes of questioning or verifying information (e.g. checking for warrants, verifying a car registration, et cetera). In general, detainment without cause does not rise to the level of a serious violation of civil rights unless force is used.
In order to arrest you, the police need to have probable cause that you have actually committed a crime. Depending upon jurisdiction the police may or may not be required to inform you as to the specific crime(s) that you are believed to have committed but there does need to be a specific criminal violation. It is true that the police do not need to Mirandize you until you are questioned but any statements you make voluntarily are admissible regardless of whether you have been informed of your rights. An arrest based upon false premises or without probably cause is a serious violation of civil rights (colloquially referred to as a “242 violation”). You will likely hear the charges that you are ‘booked’ on during processing but it is not obligatory.
Until you are arraigned, you may not hear the actual charges brought against you because it is the prosecutor who determines what charges will be brought in court. The prosecutor’s charges may differ considerably from the booking charges.
This is the salient advice for any adverse or even potentially adverse contact with police. You can find yourself in a lot of trouble for a misconstrued statement or one taken out of context even if there is no actual evidence of wrongdoing. If you have any reason to believe that you might be charged with a crime even by association, or if you are asked to come “down to the station” for questioning, politely insist that you want your lawyer present.
Stranger
This concise statement sums up my entire life.
The article says he didn’t seek a lawyer until he was out of jail. It doesn’t say anything about being denied access to a lawyer during the 17 days. Probably what happened is that the judge told him he has a right to legal representation at the hearing on day 8, but that would mean he’d have to wait even longer (so he can get the lawyer), and Mr. Lowe waived that right. Along with the right to be served the warrant, which the article says Mr. Lowe explicitly waived.
The judge told him his only options were to waive extradition — in which New Mexico would deliver him to Texas authorities — or wait for Texas authorities to pick him up. Lowe, unsure what the legal implications were of either option, waived extradition based on the court’s suggestion that he do so.
“Waive extradition” as written in the article means waiving the right to be issued and served the warrant. In English, AIUI the judge asked him if he wanted to skip the formality of being told why he is in jail. And the man of his own free will, in writing, said let’s skip that.
~Max
Dallas absolutely knew that the Quay County Jail was going to release Lowe if Texas didn’t pick him up - there weren’t local charges and they had no basis to hold him once Dallas decided not to extradite. Now the contact in Dallas may have asked the county jail to notify Lowe of the court date, if the contact knew of the court date - but that doesn’t mean they did. I had a whole lot of county jails that I asked to give information to people my employer wasn’t extraditing - and when I called to confirm , at least 25% of the jails had not passed on the information.
I’d go a little further.
Do not answer any questions, no matter how innocuous they may seem (beyond some basics like your name which I think you have to answer but not where you were last night or whenever). Ask if you are under arrest or free to go. Often, police will tell you that you are free to go and this is just a polite chat. If they tell you that then go. Leave on the spot.
If they arrest you then you ask for an attorney and STFU. Do not say anything to the police until you have had an opportunity to talk to an attorney that is working for you.
This still begs the question of why it took over a week to get him an arraignment and why he was arrested at all without sufficient probable cause. Even if he fumbled his way through arrest, booking, confinement, and arraignment, there are still a couple of massive civil rights violations right there.
Stranger
That refers to the warrant issued by the governor of New Mexico in response to a demand by the governor of Texas, not the one issued by the court in Texas. And if he hadn’t waived that, he may have been held longer. Waving extradition started the clock for Texas to pick him up . I think Texas had five days from the later when they were notified Lowe was available to be extradited - it usually takes longer than that for the paperwork to travel from Dallas to the governor of Texas to the governor of New Mexico etc.
Why? Do you think that judges run down to the local jail to get a head-count of new prisoners?
What culpability do you feel that the judge bears in this situation?
It wasn’t an arraignment on criminal charges - it was an extradition hearing. He was arrested on the basis of the Texas warrant. As far as I can tell, in NM he was entitled to “first be taken forthwith before a judge of a court of record in this state, who shall inform him of the demand made for his surrender” but there doesn’t appear to be a set number of days. And the arrest appears to have been over the July 4 weekend , which would have caused some delay.
So far as I can tell Governor Grisham’s warrant was the only one binding upon the police in Tucumcari, NM. It was the warrant she issued, not the one from Texas, that served as immediate grounds for Mr. Lowe’s arrest. The New Mexico warrant is required, by law (your cite), to “substantially recite the facts necessary to the validity of its issuance”. Those facts are given in 31-4-3:
“No demand for the extradition of a person charged with crime in another state shall be recognized by the governor unless in writing, alleging […] that the accused was present in the demanding state at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, and that thereafter he fled from the state, and accompanied by a copy of an indictment found or by information supported by affidavit in the state having jurisdiction of the crime, or by a copy of an affidavit made before a magistrate there, together with a copy of any warrant which was issued thereupon; or […]”
The New Mexico warrant is also required, by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, to particularly describe the person to be seized (otherwise how would they know who to arrest?).
~Max
31-4-22. Written waiver of extradition proceedings.
Any person arrested in this state charged with having committed any crime in another state or alleged to have escaped from confinement or broken the terms of his bail, probation or parole may waive the issuance and service of the warrant provided for in Sections 31-4-7 and 31-4-8 NMSA 1978 and all other procedure incidental to extradition proceedings by executing or subscribing in the presence of a magistrate or a judge of a magistrate court or of any court of record within this state a writing which states that he consents to return to the demanding state (snip).If and when such consent has been duly executed it shall forthwith be forwarded to the office of the governor of this state and filed therein. The judge shall direct the officer having such person in custody to deliver forthwith such person to the duly accredited agent or agents of the demanding state and shall deliver or cause to be delivered to such agent or agents a copy of such consent; (emphasis added)
If the fugitive waives service of the governor’s warrant and consents to return to the demanding state in writing , the consent is forwarded to the governor of New Mexico and the judge orders the jail to turn over custody to agents of the demanding state. The governor’s warrant is not needed with the waiver and consent. I’ve done this many times- the governor of the demanding state only issues a warrant if the fugitive doesn’t consent to the extradition, It doesn’t make sense to speak of the fugitive waiving service of the NM governor’s warrant after it has been issued, because once it has been issued , he’s getting sent back to the demanding state without the only benefit of the waiver - which is getting back to the demanding state more quickly.
Something I’m also curious about. We’re missing the other side of the story, with the explanation for the delay. It was June of 2020 and the article says there was a COVID outbreak in his jail, so I wonder if the pandemic has to do with it.
~Max
The theft was in 2020, he was arrested in July 2021 but the delay could still have been due to COVID
See, this is what I don’t understand. Supposing the Texas warrant specified Mr. Lowe and his address, but the New Mexico police picked up different individual with a similar name and address, Mr. Low (no ‘e’). The person who is being detained has a right, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment’s due process clause and the habeas corpus clause, to challenge the validity of his arrest warrant. To wit, that he is not the individual described in the warrant (although in the actual case, Mr. Lowe was the individual described). But if he is never served the warrant, and never told what the charge is, he will have no notice of the mistake and thus no cause to exercise the right to petition for habeas corpus, let alone the information necessary to meet his burden of proof for such a petition.
~Max
He doesn’t have to waive service and extradition. He’s absolutely entitled to not waive, have the governor’s warrant issued and served, file a habeas petition ,etc. The thing is, it’s usually not worthwhile if you are the person described in the warrant - and it certainly wouldn’t have been in Lowe’s.
Let me give you a rough timeline of how this went for me pre-COVID. My former employer issued a warrant for John Doe at some point. He gets arrested in Maine and my warrant pops up when he is fingerprinted (because we had his state ID number, associated with his fingerprints when we issued the warrant. ) on June 6. The police/jail calls me June 6 and I say we will extradite. They bring him before a judge on say 6/8 - he waives extradition , they drop the local chares and call me and tell me he’s available for pickup. I get someone to Maine no later than 6/13 to pick him up. He then goes through the court process here as if he had never been in the other state ( depends on the type of warrant - an arrest warrant is not the same a a parole/probation violation warrant is not the same as someone who absconded from a prison work release program, etc.)
Lets say that he doesn’t waive on 6/8. I have to prepare a request for a warrant to be sent to my governor. At some point , my governor issues a warrant who sends the demand to the governor of Maine who then issues a warrant or the equivalent under Maine law and Doe has his extradition hearing and gets sent back. I have never seen that process take less than 30 days.
I’m not going to say it’s never to anyone’s advantage to fight extradition - but Lowe was not going to get those charges dismissed until he returned to Texas, so fighting extradition would have kept him in custody longer.
I was referring to millions of arrests. Most of his real complaints are being held (in his case for 17 days) in deplorable conditions and then being released with no post-arrest support. I think the current numbers are that happens roughly 7 million times per year.
Who swore out the warrant? Looks like American airlines did.
Yes, they did: At the time, New Mexico had the 10th highest death rate from COVID-19 in the country. Quay County Jail was one of three jails in New Mexico where corrections officers had refused to be tested for COVID-19, according to the suit. For the next 17 days, Lowe was traumatized repeatedly by the conditions at the jail, according to the suit. He slept on the concrete floor, but did not get much rest due to his “constant state of fear of confrontation, physical abuse or sexual victimization.”
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Inhumane jail conditions violate the prisoners Rights.
Unless some violent thugs wouldn’t allow access. I have heard of jails where a gang will charge inmates for phone access, and the jail does nothing about it.
I don’t think there’s really any jails where you can’t make phone calls unless a gang lets you. I have heard that in many facilities, at the phone banks, there are “territories”, and some phones are reserved for certain gangs. I don’t think there is really any facility where only gang members control the phones, there’s a lot of vagaries to incarcerated life in America, but most of these communities require some level of cooperation between inmates or the entire community breaks down in bad ways.
Even if he were allowed access to the institution’s phone banks, then what? Most people nowadays don’t learn phone numbers; we just store them in our phones. If he wasn’t given access to his own phone, charged, then he was, realistically speaking, denied the opportunity to contact anyone.