[findanswerinwi]

My boyfriend and I had gotton into a dometic dispute which was not a violent crime but they called a domestic dispute since we live together. The police did get called and they found that are house was a mess and even though he had left before the police arrived they still did arrest him. They charged him with bail jumping, disorderly and damage to property; he was on probation from an interstate transfer from a different state. His new probation officer in wi put on his rules that he could not have no contact with me after this fact, in any way and he had to find a different place to live even though we own a house together. Well now six months later, the case did get dismissed, we did continue to live together despite his rules and they never found out, until he went to visit his p.o and she asked if he had any contact with me and he said honestly yes I still makes payments there and have bills to pay, she said she "heard" that we were still living together. (These are to totally different counties;35mi apart) She immedialtly put him in jail. She said he lied to her. She asked and he told the truth. So she put in request for him to be sent back to his original probation in MD. He holds a full-time job and is trying to start his own business in Wi. They will not let him out until they hear anything from MD. This is crazy! What is the answer?

[twinkiedooter]

No, this is not crazy as you put it. It's the way the law works. He broke the rules of his probation and the PO put him in jail to sort out everything. He will stay in jail until he has a probation violation hearing at which time his fate will be decided by the judge. In the meantime he won't be let out of jail to go to work. Unfortunately when he told the truth about seeing you his PO had no choice but to violate him.

[JimGunther]

I was a probation officer in MD for seven years and I will have to admit that the whole things seems abit odd. You have probably never heard of the Interstate Compact Agreement, but what it is is an agreement signed by most states that sets up procedures for the transfer of probation from one state to another. You say the case originated in MD and that the person lives in another state where new charges were picked up but were dismissed. One thing that the Compact specifies is that the originating states probation is the one that is followed, and in MD, no one can add conditions to a case unless the judge who wrote the probation order approved it.

However, in many domestic situations I have heard of stay-away orders being imposed and failing to obey something like that would be a probation violation without actually being a condition of probation. A standard condition of all Maryland probations is "obey all laws" and court orders fall into this category. I wonder if this is what happened.

According to the way the Compact works, violations of probation have to be reported to the state where the probation started as it is up to the judge who wrote the probation order to decide what to do. I hate to say it, but Maryland is swamped with probation and parole cases so it is not likely that they will respond quickly. On the day I resigned as a PO, I was attempting to supervise 359 criminal cases! An impossible task.

It is vitally important that the person speak to a public defender if they haven't already. Anyone facing jail time should be eligible for one and there are several issues here that only an attorney can address.

[Fr_Chuck]

Ok, just getting the criminal case dismissed, did not change the probation orders, they said to have no contact, and if you had contact, he goes to jail. So he needed to get an attorney to file a motion with the court to allow him to move back. He did now worry about the results of his actions and is now paying that price. He will be lucky if they do not revolk his probation for a willful violation of the rules and be sent back to jail or prison for violation of the rules.

This is common, not silly at all, there are rules and he decided to ignore the rules and do what he wanted to without getting the legal issues solved.

As for as his arrest, first if there was a warrant for his arrest for jumping bail, he was going to jail anyway Next in most states, the police have to arrest someone if they arrive at a domestic issue and see any evidence of a fight, room a mess, someone with cuts or signs of a fight and so on.
If they don't arrest, they have a long form to fill out saying why they did not arrest and the officer can then be held personally liable if someone latter gets hurt that day because of a new fight.