Not always.

Play doctor, not lawyer. It's more fun and no one cares if you're wrong as you are here. :)

Example?

A conviction is a judgment. A guilty plea is just that-- a plea. After accepting a guilty plea a court must still enter a judgment of conviction in order to make it a conviction.

In certain jurisdictions, for minor offenses, a court can accept a plea of guilty and continue a case for a period of time, like a year for example, and dismiss the case if no other arrests appear. In this case, one plead guilty but there was no conviction-- ever. (This is generally done with the consent of the state though this method seems to have been replaced in many jurisdictions by court diversion programs where one deals directly with the DA and takes classes, pays fines and/or does community service and the DA will nolle prosequi when the requirements are complete thereby not using court resources hence, diversion). Guilty plea; no conviction.

Another example would be in Illinois where we have a disposition of supervision rather than conviction. One can plead guilty to a huge number of offenses here (supervision is actually standard for 1st DUI here and a whole host of misdemeanors) and not get a conviction. Supervision is not a conviction and doesn't create a criminal record-- in fact, supervisions can't even be seen publicy on driving records (so you can have a reckless driving, a speeding 30+ over and a DUI under your belt and an insurance company wouldn't know assuming you were no longer required to purchase high-risk insurance). Guilty plea; no conviction.

A conviction is a judgment; a plea is a plea.

I believe what you mean to say is that a conviction after a plea of guilty is the same as a conviction after a trial and a finding of guilt.

Just read another post in here about flying internationally with a warrant. Seems like everyone seems to think that one is different and when flying internationally versus domestically one would be arrested with an outstanding warrant. Interesting.

So if I'm understanding correctly, when flying domestically they don't really run any kind of routine "check" on passengers with any kind of regularity so they wouldn't probably catch an outstanding warrant but on the other hand.....

when flying internationally you would probably get out of the country just fine but when trying to re-enter the country you would get arrested when they saw that you had an outstanding warrant when they "swipe" your passport?

I just find all of this so interesting really. I should have went into law instead of business :)

If you have warrants, take care of them.

That's essentially correct though not all warrants will show up to CBP and not all warrants that they do see will result in a long-term detention if the subject of the warrant happens to be caught by CBP. (Extradidion involves money and if there is no extradition, then there is a release).

:rolleyes:

That's what happened to my friend. Luckily, AA put the phone number of the DA in the remarks of the PNR, so my friend's girlfriend contacted the DA, who took a closer look at the file and said, basically "I'm not going to extradict over this, but please ask your boyfriend, when he gets a chance, to find a local lawyer and have that lawyer call me to clean this up". But he was still in jail for almost 48 hours.

Exactly; it is not something one should count on, and it will still result in some detention, but it happens quite often. 48 hours is no picnic.

"If you have warrants, take care of them."

I'm sorry, the forum for unsolicited off-topic advice is two threads over.

OK, for a lets follow the thread for a second. The very first post (it's at the top of the previous page says


The only possible answer to this issue and to remove any risk is


So while you may or may not agree, this was not off topic advice, it is actually the best advice he could receive.


It's really starting to suck around here that whenever somebody sees an answer they don't like they feel the need to make some rude comment about it.

Seriously, the very best thing this person and anybody else with a warrant could do before getting on an airplane, is to get it taken care of. Everything else is a guessing game, but if you get the warrant resolved, it's no longer a guessing game if you will end up being detained or not.

Perhaps you should have quoted the whole post for the context above.

Actually, it is the most useless advice he could receive; when is David supposed to take care of the warrants? Before the funeral? The question was about getting to the funeral, obviously an urgent topic, with no time to take care of the warrant beforehand. It was not a general question about warrants yet our LEO community here was happy to give 'advice' on the topic without actually responding to the question asked.

Perhaps if it was an actual answer to the question asked paying attention to the context of the question (which you conveniently excised to make your 'point') then it might have been received better.

Seriously, when is there time to do that before a funeral? Seriously.

Ari,
Thank you.

Absolutely. And if that means you can't make it to the funeral, then so be it. People have missed funerals for a much lesser reasons than having outstanding warrants.

"People have missed funerals for a much lesser reasons than having outstanding warrants."


I'm sorry, the forum for unsolicited off-topic advice is two threads over.