Philadelphia Bench Warrants: How to Get a Bench Warrant Lifted
Bench Warrants in Philadelphia, PA
A bench warrant is a judge’s order for your arrest because you missed court. It does not expire, and ignoring it does not make it go away. In Philadelphia, there are two ways to resolve one: turn yourself in and have a hearing, or have a lawyer ask the court and the District Attorney’s Office to lift the warrant without you appearing. For older cases and for clients who live out of state, we can often get the warrant lifted, and sometimes the whole case withdrawn, without the client ever returning to Philadelphia. Call or text 267-225-2545 for a free warrant check.
A bench warrant is a serious problem. The judge can revoke your bail, keep the money you posted, hold you in contempt, and send you to jail for missing court. Our Philadelphia bench warrant lawyers can help you get the warrant lifted, whether that means arranging a surrender and representing you at the hearing or asking the court to lift the warrant without you appearing at all. This page explains how bench warrants work in Pennsylvania. Every case is different, so call us for advice on yours.
What will happen if I don’t go to court?
Zak T. Goldstein, Esq. - Criminal Defense Lawyer for Lifting a Bench Warrant in PA
If you are a defendant and miss your court date without telling the court, the judge will almost certainly issue a bench warrant. When the police eventually arrest you on the warrant, the judge could also hold you in contempt and revoke your bail. The same could be true for a witness in a case. The Commonwealth does not always seek to arrest its witnesses when the witnesses fail to appear, but in some cases, the Commonwealth could obtain a material witness warrant for you if you were subpoenaed for court to testify as a witness and failed to appear.
What is a bench warrant?
A bench warrant is an order issued by the judge directing any law enforcement officers with whom you come into contact to arrest you. If the police stop you for anything, even a traffic stop, and run your name, they will see the warrant and arrest you. An open warrant can also show up on an employment background check, and customs officers can detain you when you re-enter the United States, even decades later.
Are there any other punishments for missing court?
Philadelphia Bench Warrant Lawyer
Sooner or later, the police will arrest you or you will decide to turn yourself in. When you go before a judge to have the warrant lifted, there are other potential punishments that the judge could impose. The judge could hold you in contempt and sentence you to a fine or up to six months in jail. The judge could also revoke your bail as a flight risk or raise it so that you have to pay more to get out. If the court forfeits your bail, you could owe the city or county a large amount of money. In most counties in Pennsylvania, the defendant or the surety actually pays 10% of the bail amount. This means that if bail is set at $100,000, then the defendant would have to pay $10,000 in order to be released. If a judge finds that the defendant willfully missed court, then the defendant could be required to post the other $90,000.
How can I get a bench warrant lifted?
There are two ways to get a bench warrant lifted. You can turn yourself in and have a hearing, or a lawyer can ask the court to lift the warrant without you appearing. Which option is realistic depends on the court, the charges, and how long the warrant has been open. We cover the second option below. If you turn yourself in, Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 150 says the court cannot hold you longer than 72 hours without a bench warrant hearing before a judge or commissioner. If the 72 hours runs out on a weekend or holiday, the court must hold the hearing by the close of the next business day. The judge who conducts the bench warrant hearing will lift the bench warrant and determine whether to reinstate and release you on the same bail, revoke bail, or raise the bail. Additionally, the prosecution may move for contempt, in which case you would have a contempt hearing.
In Philadelphia, you turn yourself in at a courtroom in the Criminal Justice Center. You must arrive early in the morning. The court will usually see you that day, and many of our clients go home the same day. Judges almost always treat you better if you come in voluntarily with a lawyer than if the police bring you in. If the police arrest you on the warrant instead, they will take you to the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, and you will wait there until the bench warrant judge sees you by video from the prison.
Can a lawyer get my bench warrant lifted without me turning myself in?
Often, yes. Since the pandemic, Philadelphia courts have allowed defense lawyers to ask the court to lift a bench warrant without requiring the defendant to surrender first. The process usually works like this. We pull your docket and confirm the warrant. We contact the assigned assistant district attorney, explain why you missed court, and show what has happened in your life since. If the District Attorney’s Office agrees, the judge can lift the warrant based on the filings and give you a new court date without you setting foot in the Criminal Justice Center. If the judge denies the request, you would still have to turn yourself in and have a hearing, but you would do it with counsel and a plan.
This works best in Municipal Court cases (misdemeanors and preliminary hearings) and in older cases. In Court of Common Pleas cases, the request goes to the judge assigned to your case rather than the bench warrant judge, and judges differ in how they handle it. For serious felony charges, the court will usually insist that you appear. Counties outside Philadelphia handle this differently, and many now allow a lawyer to file a motion to lift the warrant instead of requiring a surrender.
What is a judge-only bench warrant?
A judge-only bench warrant means that when you get arrested on the warrant or turn yourself in, your bench warrant hearing will be held before the judge that originally issued the warrant. In Philadelphia, if you receive a normal bench warrant, then the warrant will be addressed by whichever judge happens to be assigned to bench warrant court on the day that you have your hearing. If you receive a judge-only warrant, then you will have the warrant addressed by the judge who issued it.
How long can they hold me on a bench warrant?
Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 150 provides that the court cannot hold you on a bench warrant for more than 72 hours without a hearing, or past the close of the next business day if the 72 hours runs out on a weekend or holiday. Once the warrant is lifted, you could still be held if the judge raises or revokes your bail. This is true both for criminal defendants and material witnesses. If the police arrest you in a different county from the one that issued the warrant, it can take longer. The jail in the arresting county must notify the issuing county, and the 72-hour limit in Rule 150 applies to detention in the county that issued the warrant.
What happens after the bench warrant is lifted?
Once the bench warrant is lifted, the judge will schedule the case for the next hearing. If you missed your preliminary hearing, then the judge would schedule the case for the preliminary hearing. If you missed your trial date, then the case would be scheduled for trial. It is relatively rare, but in some cases, the court may conduct a hearing or trial in your absence if the court finds that you willfully failed to appear. So it is possible, though unlikely, that a judge already found you guilty in absentia. If that happened, the court could require you to serve the sentence. You may still be able to appeal, but the clock runs from the sentencing, and a defendant who stays a fugitive past the appeal deadline can forfeit the right to appeal. The sooner you come forward, the more options you have.
How can I find out if I have a bench warrant?
If you missed court as a defendant, you almost certainly have a bench warrant. We can check for you in minutes. Call or text 267-225-2545 for a free warrant check. If you are facing criminal charges and have a bench warrant, we are happy to look it up for you and discuss representation in the case and getting the warrant lifted. You can also check the public court dockets by searching for your name at https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/DocketSheets/CP.aspx. If you have a bench warrant, it will typically be indicated on the docket.
What if my bench warrant is years old?
An old bench warrant is still an active warrant. Bench warrants in Pennsylvania do not expire, and the court will not clear one just because time passed. We regularly hear from people who learn about a ten- or twenty-year-old warrant when they apply for a job, renew a license, or come back through customs at the airport.
The age of the warrant cuts both ways. The police can still arrest you on it. But if the case was minor, you have stayed out of trouble, and you can show the prosecutor what you have done with your life since, the age of the case becomes your best argument. Witnesses move, officers retire, and evidence disappears, so the District Attorney’s Office often has little interest in trying a decades-old misdemeanor.
In these cases we put together a mitigation package for the assigned prosecutor: a letter explaining what happened and why you missed court, proof of employment, letters from family, employers, or people in your community, treatment records where they help, and your clean record since the case. Based on that package, the District Attorney’s Office will often agree to have the warrant lifted administratively so that nobody has to arrest you. In some cases, the prosecutor agrees to withdraw the charges altogether, as happened in the K.E. case below. If the Commonwealth withdraws the charges, you can then petition to have the arrest record expunged.
I live out of state or in another country. Do I have to come back to Philadelphia?
Not always. Many of our bench warrant clients live in other states or overseas, and in less serious cases we are often able to resolve the warrant without the client traveling to Philadelphia. We handle the entire process by phone, email, and video. You send us the documents for the mitigation package, we deal with the District Attorney’s Office and the court, and you hear the result from us.
If the court lifts the warrant, one of two things happens. Either the court schedules the case for its next hearing, and we then work out whether you need to appear in person or whether the case can be resolved without you, or the Commonwealth withdraws the case. If the court does require you to appear, we schedule the date in advance so that you know exactly what to expect and can usually be in and out of the courthouse the same day.
Ignoring the warrant because you live far away is a mistake. The warrant follows you. It can appear on background checks, customs officers can detain you when you re-enter the United States, and if the police stop you in another state, they can hold you while Pennsylvania decides whether to bring you back. For a minor case Pennsylvania may decline to extradite, but you could still spend days in a local jail while that gets sorted out. Dealing with the warrant on your schedule, with a lawyer, is always better than dealing with it on theirs.
Case Study: Twenty-Year-Old Bench Warrant Lifted and Charges Dismissed Without Returning to Philadelphia
In Commonwealth v. K.E., Attorney Zak Goldstein represented a client who learned that he had a twenty-year-old bench warrant for knowing and intentional possession of a controlled substance. Police had arrested K.E. about twenty years earlier in two misdemeanor drug cases in different counties at around the same time. Although K.E. resolved one of the drug charges through participation in a treatment program, K.E. did not realize that he still had an outstanding warrant when he left the program.
K.E. moved out of state, rebuilt his life, and eventually obtained a job as a professional which required a great deal of travel for work. Over the years, customs officers detained K.E. for up to 24 hours when he re-entered the country after business trips, but nobody ever arrested him or told him he had a warrant and pending charges. Police had even stopped him for traffic tickets without telling him about the warrant. When returning from a recent trip, K.E. learned that he had a bench warrant from the old drug case and immediately contacted Attorney Goldstein.
Attorney Goldstein put together a mitigation packet for the District Attorney's Office showing that K.E. completed drug treatment at the time, had remained clean for twenty years, and had gone on to have a successful career in another state. After receiving the packet, the District Attorney's Office agreed to lift the bench warrant and dismiss the charges without requiring K.E. to return to Philadelphia.
Why should I retain a Philadelphia Criminal Defense Lawyer for help with my bench warrant?
Our Philadelphia criminal defense lawyers have represented thousands of clients in criminal cases and have resolved bench warrants for clients in Philadelphia, across the country, and overseas. Each case is different, and we never guarantee results, but you will almost always do better if you retain counsel and come forward on your own terms than if the police pick you up. In many cases, the judge reinstates our client’s bail and releases the client the same day. We offer a free criminal defense strategy session to any potential client. Call or text 267-225-2545 to discuss your case today.
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