I hope everyone had a joyful and peaceful Christmas and I wish everyone blessings and a prosperous 2025.
We often see reports in the media or directly from law enforcement about people being arrested and held in jail with a bond amount or released after a period of time. I would guess that often citizens read these news stories or press releases and give little thought about the process that goes with it or the responsibilities of the various parts of the criminal justice system.
Let’s take a few moments here to break down the process and timeline. Law enforcement, whether that be the sheriff’s office, city police or a state law enforcement agency, is responsible for making the initial arrest in a criminal case.
Once an arrest is made for a felony, the law enforcement officer submits a written statement providing probable cause to the prosecuting attorney to seek formal charges.
The prosecuting attorney prepares the charging documents and application for an arrest warrant after reviewing the probable cause statement and determining if there is a need to keep the individual incarcerated. The prosecuting attorney’s office then submits the charging documents to the circuit clerk’s office to submit to the associate circuit judge.
The associate circuit judge reviews the charging documents and probable cause. After reviewing the charges and probable cause, the judge then makes a decision on signing an arrest warrant, and what, if any, the bond amount and bond conditions will be for the arrest warrant. When the arrest warrant is signed and the bond conditions are set by the judge, the circuit clerk’s office will then submit the warrant to the sheriff’s office electronically or by hard copy.
Once the sheriff’s office receives the signed warrant, the person is “served” by being read or provided a copy of the warrant. All of these steps have to take place within 24 hours of the person being arrested or they by law must be released from jail.
As you can see, this process requires the multiple offices and officials to cooperate and complete their essential steps in a timely manner. Twenty-four hours may seem like plenty of time, but depending on the complexity of the criminal investigation it may take law enforcement some time to complete the probable cause statement and then the availability of the prosecuting attorney and associate circuit judge is dependent on the current court activity. Most of the time this process is completed within the 24-hour period, sometimes with hours to spare, other times with minutes remaining. There are occasions where the warrant is received after the 24 hour period and the person is released and then arrested again by law enforcement.
During the month of December, members of the sheriff’s office responded to many incidents and took the following reports. Assault/domestic violence, 20; animal complaints, four; burglary, one; child kidnapping, one; child molestation, one; death investigation, two; driving while intoxicated, one; forgery, one; identity theft, two; lost property, one; missing person, four; traffic offense, five; possession of controlled substance, one; property damage, three; accidental shooting, one; stealing, six; tampering with utilities, one; witness tampering, one; drug trafficking, one; trespass, one; and warrant arrest, four.