In 2003, Norwalker Ayanna Khadijah overslept after working all night, and was late for a court appearance at 10:45 a.m.. Judge Susan Reynolds ordered her arrested on failure to appear in court, despite pleas from Khadijah’s lawyer and the fact that Khadijah showed up sortly after 11:30 a. m. Thus was set the Kafkaesque $5,000 bond and prosecutorial zeal in pursuing this case.
The state Supreme Court yesterday agreed a Norwalk woman should not have been charged with missing court for oversleeping and showing up 43 minutes late.
The high court upheld the decision of the state’s Appellate Court, which last year overturned the woman’s conviction on charges of failing to appear in court in 2003.
Arguments in the case last month lasted about an hour, and the Supreme Court, in a one-paragraph decision, ruled the case should never have come before it in the first place.
“The court was kind of incredulous as to why the state appealed,” said Mary Ann Royle, the defendant’s attorney.
The Appellate Court ruled that oversleeping did not qualify as “willfully” skipping court, the legal standard for failure to appear cases.
Prosecutors appealed the ruling, setting up a Supreme Court case that could have had wide-ranging implications for defendants who miss court due to illness, traffic, oversleeping or other issues.
But the state legislature took much of the suspense from the case this year by relaxing the state’s rules for failure to appear.
The new rules give defendants until 4 p.m. to show up at court before being charged with failure to appear. The rule applies only to defendants facing misdemeanor charges; those in court for felonies can still be arrested immediately after a judge calls their case.
Misdemeanor defendants can still be held in contempt of court or have their bail increased for showing up late, but they cannot be hit with an additional criminal charge if they arrive before 4 p.m., experts have said.
From 8,000 to 10,000 defendants in the state face misdemeanor failure to appear charges each year, compared with about 4,500 felony defendants.
The legislature enacted the new rule partly as a response to the 2003 case the state Supreme Court ruled on yesterday, legislators have said.
source:: Advocate, State justices pass judgment in case of ’skipping’ court, , By Zach Lowe, November 10 2007
