What to do if you find out you have a warrant out for your arrest

In My Humble Opinion
1

A few weeks back a friend of mine got a call from a lawyer’s office saying that she has a warrant out for her arrest. She figured it was some kind of scam, hung up on them and didn’t give it much thought. Then somebody else she knows got the same call and it was legit, the friend didn’t have a warrant out on him but he did have a judgement against him that he didn’t know about.

So my friend called me and asked me to look it up online and yes, she does have a warrant out on her for Failure To Appear.

It seems she has been sued by the City of Baltimore (she doesn’t live in the city) and she has no idea why they would have sued her and why she owes them money.

There was a case in 2001 for $349, that was dismissed for

Rule 3-507 Lack of Juris (ATP) - T2
Case closed.

Then again in 2003 for $436 that was dismissed for the same reason.

Then again in 2003 for $1331 + interest for a total of $2014.
She missed the court date (because she never heard anything or received anything telling her she had to go to court) and a Body Attachment for FTA was issued in 2008. The case is still ACTIVE and the judgement was renewed in 2013.

She has lived in the same house for almost 50 years, so if they really wanted her she isn’t hard to find. She’s a 70 year old widow, living on a very limited income (@$17,000 a year). She can’t come up with that much money, and she doesn’t know why she owes it anyway. She’s never been in trouble in her life and she is pretty upset over this.

Calls to the city have done nothing, nobody knows anything about it. She called the police and they told her they couldn’t tell her anything over the phone, but to come on in and they’d take care of it. She’s a little scared to do that. Somebody in the Mayor’s office was supposed to help her and he backed out of it, telling her he has no idea what she is talking about and he can’t do anything for her.

Now she’s scared to drive, afraid if she gets pulled over for some reason she’ll be arrested on the spot. She’s afraid to go to the police station. AFAIK, you cannot be released without bail on a FTA, so she’d have to come up with something. She’d be happy to make some kind of payment arrangements but she has no idea who to talk to.

Any advice for her is appreciated.

2

Try calling the local bar association to see if there’s a group that provides pro bono work to low income people who need a lawyer.

3

Thanks,
I’ll put a call in to them tomorrow.

4

Could it be someone else with the same name? Could it be a case of stolen identity?

5

It could be.

She has a fairly common last name except for a one letter difference in spelling. There is a woman who does live in Balto City with the same name, except my friend is white and the other woman is black, and there’s a huge age difference.

Now I remember this happened to another friend. The police showed up with a warrant to arrest her husband, only when they saw him they said never mind. They were looking for a black man and my friend’s husband is white.

6

Those amounts seem like they could be traffic violations. Did she ever sell her old used car to someone, who might not have completed the title transfer into his name? Then the buyer got traffic tickets, & ignored them, and they still show her as the owner of that car.

This happened to me once.
I found (from my credit report) that a vehicle I had sold several years earlier had received several tickets, & eventually towed & totaled, with the title still in my name. They never managed to locate me to notify me of this, but they did locate my credit record to file claims against.

Fixing this took a notarized statement to the State DMV that it had been sold by me to XXX as of date xxx. Then filing correction notices in the credit reports. I notified the ticketing cities, impound lot, and towing company, but none of them ever did anything about it.

7

If there is a warrant, this is a wise fear. She needs to lawyer up pronto.

8

Parallel identities, even when natural and not from any kind of criminal intent, can have huge consequences.

My father had a doppelganger with the same first name, middle initial and last name. There were a few minor incidents of confusion (a pawn shop calling about some goods, a library looking for an overdue book)… but in the end it more or less directly killed him when the hospital assumed he was the worthless ER regular of that name.

9

That could be police code for “Come down here and turn yourself in, save us the trouble of coming to look for you.” You can’t put cuffs on a person over the phone.

10

Agree with the possibility of it coming from a sold but never retitled vehicle. I’ve seen that happen to other people.

If she ever drove in the city it’d be easy to have gotten a parking ticket a time or two. Then some “helpful” passerby removes the ticket from the windshield and throws it away. Har-de-har! She drives off totally unaware of the citation. Typically though she’d also have had to ignore or miss later snail-mail from the City or courts. Implausible, but not impossible.

11

She really needs a lawyer to help. It could be mis-identification, some unknown traffic ticket, something that a judge might readily dismiss, but without a lawyer she could get lost in red tape and end up owing more to the court and lawyers. I can’t speak for every state but most of them seem to suck at clearing up nonsense like this. Public defenders are way too busy with criminals to get involved in these things, and there’s never enough of them even for the criminal work, but states ought to be able to help their citizens out of these messes.

12

Absolutely. Lawyer-up immediately. There are many reasons why this could happen, and a lawyer might be able to clear it up with just a phone call and a reasonable cost to you.

If you don’t clear it up, you run the risk of being arrested and taken to jail if you are merely stopped for a broken tail light. A check of outstanding warrants will turn up your name, and you won’t be able to explain to the cop, you’ll go to jail first. Not worth the risk.

I’ve had experience with something like this. Sometimes cops will have a warrant issued just because they didn’t like something you did. Since the offense is too minor to send out someone to find you, they count on you being stopped somewhere, sometime, eventually, for a minor infraction, and they gotcha.

13

She absolutely needs a lawyer. If she gets stopped by a cop or goes to the police station they will put her in jail on the spot. Straighten it out beforehand, not while sitting in a cell.

14

Thanks everybody for taking the time to answer.

Unfortunately, the Bar Association was no help. There is help for low income people over 60, but they only help with criminal cases, not civil.

She’s ready to just go turn herself in, I’ve asked her to hold off a little longer.

She thinks they will let her out on her own recog, but I don’t think so.

This happened to a friend who got pulled over for speeding and found out he had a warrant for FTA for a traffic violation. The cops were nice about it but told him they had to arrest him. The court commissioner was very nice, apologized to him, but she had to set bail, it’s the law. If you don’t show up for court the first time they aren’t going to trust you. When I went in to get him out she apologized to me, for the trouble, and even though it was a minor traffic violation, she still had to set bail. The minimum at that time was $10,000. Everybody from the cops, to the jail, to the commissioner, to the judge were extremely nice, they understood that he had moved and never got the court summons, but he still had to spend the night in jail.

I’m sure everybody is going to be nice to her, and they probably won’t want to put her in jail, but nobody is going to have a choice about it.

I should go with her.

15

:eek::eek::eek:

16

You should go if you can. It would be a very nice act on your part. This is an awful situation. I doubt a 70 year old widow will get put in jail but she could just end up in debt. Very unfair situation. Hope for a nice judge who will just dismiss it. Maybe contact some local media to see if they’ll help out and turn it into a human interest story.

17

You keep talking about arrest and bail. Sounds like a criminal case. You normally aren’t arrested for civil matters.

18

How’s her health? Consider getting a doctor’s note outlining her conditions and medications, highlighting that it would be a huge liability to incarcerate her for any length of time.

I can’t believe there’s not an attorney to be found who would be willing to help with this, even just making some calls and finding some paperwork, or coming along to turn herself in.

19

Is it “Tuttle” or “Buttle”?

20

The problem with people telling her to get a lawyer is that she can’t come up with $2K to pay the fine. Having a lawyer represent you in a case like this is not like a divorce or anything, but it’s not nothing either and will add to her troubles.

My inclination is she should go down and take her chances. 70 year old woman, solid citizen, never received notice etc., she might beat it. And if she does end up spending a night or two in jail it’s not like it’s the worst thing in the world either. Not a pleasant experience, but she’ll survive it.

Beyond that, my feeling is that you could contact a local newspaper reporter to feel out possible interest in the story. 70 year old woman swept up by the legal system in a Kafka-esque situation. If someone takes it up, it would add pressure on the justice system to work things out in her favor.