What changes to Court Rule CrRLJ 3.2 impact the public?

On June 3, 2010, the Supreme Court adopted changes to the court rule (CrRLJ 3.2) concerning bail forfeiture. Beginning July 1, 2012, criminal offenses can no longer be resolved by bail forfeiture and all criminal violations require a mandatory court appearance.


To implement the court rule change both the Finding/Judgment Code and Result Code of "BF" (Bail Forfeiture) will be end dated in JIS and SCOMIS.  Effective July 1, 2012, courts should not use this code for criminal charges with a violation date of July 1, 2012, or later.



Criminal Citation Form Changes


The Uniform Infraction and Citation Committee amended the Criminal Citation form. This included:


  • On the face of the criminal citations, bail amounts no longer appear and only Mandatory Appearance appears.
  • On the back of the defendant copy, all bail forfeiture language was removed.


The July 2012 criminal citation forms must be used beginning July 1, 2013. This gives jurisdictions time to use up current supplies of criminal citations. The SECTOR (e-Ticket) form will also be modified to reflect the above changes. 


Starting July 1, 2012, criminal citations that are still marked as Bail Forfeitable WILL NOT be processed as a bail forfeitures by the courts. If the violation date is on or after July 1, 2012, bail forfeiture is not an option.  Courts have been instructed to post money received on these cases as "Cash Bail" on the case and send the defendant a new hearing notice that indicates that appearance is mandatory.



RN id: 2276