Writs for Incarcerated Defendants: Who Drives?

Sometimes a person who is already incarcerated for one crime needs to be prosecuted for another crime. A surprisingly common question, usually from a sheriff’s office, is who is responsible for getting the defendant-inmate to trial? The county that wants the inmate (the requesting county)? Or the county that has the inmate (the custodial county)? There are two primary ways for a prosecutor to secure the presence of a defendant confined elsewhere in North Carolina: (1) a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum, and (2) a request for temporary custody under G.S. 15A-711. (Different procedures apply for an inmate needed as a witness, see G.S. 15A-805; 17-41 through -46 (writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum, using form AOC-G-112), but I’ll leave those aside for today.) Though only the first option is technically a writ, both practices are sometimes referred to as “writting” a defendant from jail or prison to court. In either case, the law does not clearly address who is responsible for transporting the defendant to trial, and sheriffs’ offices on either side of a request sometimes disagree about it. For whatever help it may be, here is what I know about the two options. Writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum. A writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum is a common-law writ. There is no statute describing it, and thus no clear allocation of responsibility for getting the defendant-inmate where he or she needs to be. Nevertheless, the boilerplate form used to apply for and issue the writ, AOC-CR-223, is styled as [...]