What is a PV hold?
by: Rjohnson • April 24, 2011 • no comments
I have a client who was in custody with a pending probation-violation in another county. My client is a decent fellow. I doubt that he would stay in custody for long, except that because there were two reasons to keep him in custody (the new charges and the PV), the system was in less of a hurry to straighten either one out. And my client had a family funeral to attend, so release was imperative.
Release on the new charges was no particular problem. Client bailed out. But then he sat in jail for three or four days on the authority of a "hold." I don't really know what a hold is. I can't find statutory authority using that term. When I posted on the Pond about this, no one could find anything definitive. I suspect that holds are county-specific, or maybe jail-specific, but here's where they seem to come from:
ORS 137.545 permits probation officers, police officers, or anyone with arrest power to arrest a probationer for violating the conditions of probation. It further provides that a statement by the probation officer that the probationer has violated the conditions of probation provides sufficient basis for detention until the probationer can be brought before the court. So, a hold is a warrant-lite, issued by a probation officer.
Subsection (3) of ORS 137.545 requires a release decision within 36 hours, not counting weekends, except for good cause. It is clear from the statute that a judge in one county can make a release decision as to a hold or probation-violation warrant from another county. (In my case, I was afraid that the local judge would order a transport and decline to consider release as to the out-of-county case.) It may be that knowing about the transport schedule and the 36-hour window would permit a certain amount of gamesmanship, but the transport schedule is secret and probably subject to the whim of corrections officials, so there's a gamble in trying to barely miss the transport and force a hearing in the custodial county. Since no remedy appears in the statute it would be very tough to get any kind of review in time to make a difference.
In my case, after the client posted bail on Wednesday, I expected him to be transported Thursday. I had heard unofficially that that was one of the two scheduled weekly transports, but corrections officials wouldn't talk to me about the transport schedule even as to my specific client, for security reasons (not petty power-trip reasons, lest you have such a cynical notion.) When he didn't get transported on Thursday, I tried to set a release hearing, and the earliest court date they would give me was Monday call for a Tuesday hearing. I went into the court on Monday prepared to argue with the judge and insist on an immediate hearing, possibly trying to lay a heavy guilt trip about funerals and the money my client scraped up for bail and his children in the courtroom. And then, as I was in the hall outside the courtroom, I got a phone call from the released client. So maybe the jail knew about the 36-hour window. My client is now off to the funeral. Not exactly a happy ending, but better than the ending where he misses it.
