Request By:
Mr. Ulys Bingham
Knox County Sheriff
Barbourville, Kentucky 40906
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You seek our opinion on duties relating to the sheriff.
When serving a warrant of arrest, you ask whether you as sheriff should bring him before the district judge or take the arrested person to jail.
Criminal Rule 3.02(1) provides in part that "An officer making an arrest under a warrant issued upon a complaint shall take the arrested person without unnecessary delay before a magistrate as commanded in the warrant." "Magistrate" means a judge of the circuit court or judge or trial commissioner of the district court. RCr 1.06. However, you should bring the person arrested before the judge as directed in the warrant, without unnecessary delay, depending upon the availability of the judge. As to what constitutes "unnecessary delay" is a matter for the courts, depending upon the factual circumstances of each individual case. The appellate court in Little v. Commonwealth, Ky., 438 S.W.2d 527 (1969) 529, 530, construed the phrase "without delay" to mean that the person arrested must be taken before the magistrate "as promptly as is reasonably possible under the circumstances." Thus if the arrest is made at midnight and the judge is not available in his office, you would have to put the arrested person in jail until you could take him out and take him before the judge at the earliest possible time.
Next, you ask when are you allowed to receive pay for waiting on the courts. We assume you refer to serving court process.
The sheriff's specific fees are outlined in KRS 64.090, as amended in 1978, which includes serving certain process. Under KRS 24A.140(2), the sheriff shall be compensated for his services in district court in the same manner and at the same rates as for similar services rendered to the circuit court.