Do bench warrants ever expire?
I’m not a cop, nor am I a lawyer. But there are arrest warrants and there are bench warrants. There may be other kinds o warrants, too, I don’t know. I’ve been picked up on an arrest warrant. They came looking for me. Bench warrants seem to be issued for failure to appear in court. I’ve had those issued on me, too. For bench warrants, they do not go looking for you. I’ve been picked up on a couple of them only because I fell into their laps. I was in the state, and the cops found them when running a check for an unrelated stop. I’ve been back to jurisdictions (states) in which bench warrants were issued for me, many years later, and such warrants no longer showed up in any checks. Databases are not infinite and, given the shere quantity of information accumulated annually, something’s gotta fall out to make room for new stuff. This isn’t legal advice, of course. I’m not qualified. But if I knew the specific court in which the warrant was issued, I call the court clerk’s office to check
No, they don’t. And the Statute of Limitations doesn’t expire if you’re a wanted person. Had you waited out the SoL (2-7 years for most misdemeanors, depending on jurisdiction) before having a warrant issued for your arrest, you would be fine if that SoL was up now. I would need more information on the crime and jurisdiction to make a suggestion, but the fact that it doesn’t come up is because the FBI’s CJIS/NICS system only has felonies, missing persons, terrorists and the like. And your local government (probably state) would see all warrants within that state. It could still come back and get you, but it’s always best to take care of these sorts of things. Get a lawyer.
The answer is no, a warrant does not expire until one of the following happens. 1 you get arrested, 2. you contact the agency who issued the warrant and work out a deal, 3 pay the fine or do the jail time that is required. warrants do not go away at all even if you live out of state. Until you get the warrant taken care of I would not visit the state just to be on the safe side.
