How Can You Get a Case Transfered to Another Court?

If you got a traffic ticket or criminal court case far from home, and are trying to find a way to get it transferred to another county or court, you can stop looking.  There is no way to do it. You have to deal with the case in the county where it happened. If a police officer told you differently, he was flat out wrong.

The reason is this:  in California, criminal and traffic courts are all part of the Superior Courts, which are organized county by county.  Each county has its own Superior Court, and each one does things differently.  There is no common state wide court system where cases or files are transferred between them. Each County Superior Court is independent of the others.

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There is no law that allows a defendant to get a case transferred to another county Superior Court. There is no form to do, there is no person to call to get it done.

And there is a practical reason why it cannot be done - if a trial is required, the witnesses for the trial are in the county where the incident happened.  And witnesses (such as police officers) cannot be required to go to a different county to testify. There is no legal mechanism for getting a police officer to go from San Diego to Shasta County to testify in a traffic court or DUI trial.

There are some very limited exceptions.  For example, if a case gets an extreeme amount of pulicity, like Michael Jackson’s child molestation trial, the defense Attorney can make a motion for a “Change of Venue” based upon the idea that a fair trial cannot happen where all the publicity occurred.  But in reality, those motions almost never get granted.

One other very limited exception is in juvenile cases, a court can send a case for sentencing only to the offender’s home county - but only after the defendant has been convicted. I have seen this happen, but it is super rare.

There is a way to get a court case transferred from a remote courthouse to another within in the same county if it is sent to the county seat.  For example it is possible to get a Barstow courthouse case sent to downtown San Bernardino Courthouse. But that is an Intra-County transfer, not an Inter-county transfer. And it only works if the case is going to the county seat, which is the location of the county’s government.

So unfortunately, if you live in Contra Costa County, but get a traffic ticket in San Diego, you have to deal with it there.  A court appearance may not be mandatory, but if you want a trial, you have to go back to where the incident happened.

The good news?  Penal Code section 977 allows an attorney to go to court for a defendant who does not have to go for most misdemeanor and all traffic court problems.  For example, if you got arrested for a DUI far from home, and just want to plead guilty, you can hire an attorney to do the work for you.

C. Dort

DortLaw.com