My Son is on unsupervised probation for violating a restriction order, which is BS to begin with, but anyway his ex girlfriend is taking him to court again because he was in a parking lot when she walked out of a store and claimed that put him within 20 ft of her. So he went to court on March 30th and the
Judge set his trial date for May 1st. Today a sheriff shows up and arrest him for failure to appear in court which he said my son was suppose to be there this past Monday on April 10th. We showed him all the paperwork with the May 1st dates and told him we knew nothing about the court date on Monday. They took him in and put him in jail overnight saying he was mailed papers via regular mail and should have been there for violation of his probation. He has to go before the judge in the morning. My question is shouldn't papers this important have to be signed for? We never received these papers and when I told the officer we did not get them he said it would be up to the judge in the morning on whether he believes us to let my son out.. when I asked why these papers did not require a signature he said it doesn't matter if my house was burned down as long as the paperwork matched the address of my residency he was in contempt of court.. huh? So in other words if this so called summons was put in the wrong mailbox and we never received them to know he was supposed to be in court we are SOL?

Depends on what the criminal rules say about service of this kind of notice in your state. No such rule that I have ever heard of requires someone to sign for a notice. Normally it requires that the paper be given to the individual personally.

Well, went to court this morning and it was their mistake. They had the wrong address on the paper work. Should have been 5320 not 5329.. My son has been released until his actual court date. I still think papers of this importance should either be hand delivered or signed for to avoid this kind of problem.