A Warrant Needs a Judge’s Authorization
Video Transcribed: So what the heck even is a warrant? Hi, I’m Ty Smith, an Oklahoma City attorney with Wirth Law, and this may seem like a relatively straightforward question.
Many people who watch crime dramas like Law and Order and CSI are probably pretty familiar with what a warrant is. Some of you in the audience may be unfortunate enough to have a warrant served upon you. Sorry to hear that. That sucks. But there’s a general ignorance of what a warrant exactly is. Shrunk down to all of my law school experience and my legal professional experience, a warrant is just a judge’s authorization for a law enforcement officer to search for something or someone.
Depending on the type of warrant we have, a judge is going to authorize law enforcement to look for a person who’s accused of a crime or search a location for evidence of a crime. Those are kind of the two factors, and we’re going to talk a bit later in another video about the different types of warrants. But just for today, we’re going to talk about what they are. And that’s high and low of it.
I’ve already kind of explained it. All it really is is just a green light. It’s a simple piece of paper, but it has huge implications and can’t have huge implications on your life, which is why I want to also talk to you about how you can maybe look up yourself, whether you have a warrant… A lot of people show up to court and show up to official proceedings, not knowing that there’s a warrant out for their arrest. Or they get pulled over by a cop, “Hey, do you know you have a warrant out for your arrest?”
Then they’re taken in and they have to pay money to get out, which sucks. But you can look up whether you have an arrest warrant, a warrant out for your arrest, excuse me, by going to the OSBI website. You can search on OSCN. You can search even your local sheriff’s office normally has a database upon which you can look for those things. You can look on the Department of Corrections website. And there are also several third-party organizations that do that. But normally the other resources I’ve listed there are going to be good enough for you.
If this sounds like you, if you’ve got a warrant out for you, do all this. You search yourself up, you find you have a warrant out for your arrest, okay, and you are worried you might need to talk to an Oklahoma criminal defense lawyer about this warrant, look no further. I would be glad to speak to you about this. I am at theoklahomacityattorney.com. Could also call me at 405-888-5400. As I said, we’ll be glad to talk to you about this and I look forward to hearing from you.
