Who Gets a Desk Appearance Ticket in New York?

For most people, the question of whether or not you will get a desk appearance ticket is something that has already been decided because you have one already.

But in cases in which the police have contacted you because a complaint has been made about you or there exists a warrant for your arrest, you may be interested in finding out whether or not you are likely to receive a Desk Appearance Ticket.

In New York City (Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, etc.) the likelihood of getting a Desk Appearance Ticket for anything is usually fairly low. In days long gone, if you were arrested for a misdemeanor and had no criminal history, you were highly likely to be given a Desk Appearance Ticket. Over the years, however, it has become more and more difficult to qualify for a Desk Appearance Ticket.

You must understand that the decision to issue a Desk Appearance Ticket is one that rests essentially with the Police Department. Nobody is absolutely entitled to a Desk Appearance Ticket. The police establish their own internal guidelines and they may even deviate from those guidelines from time to time.

The following factors will weigh heavily against, if not absolutely foreclose your receiving a desk appearance in New York City:

Prior criminal history
Domestic Violence accusations
Residence outside New York City
Insufficient identification at time of arrest (multiple forms are usually required)

Of course all guidelines are simply guidelines, and you will occasionally find people being given Desk Appearance Tickets who you wouldn't normally expect.

This flexibility in the system is one more excellent argument for obtaining a criminal defense lawyer if you can to negotiate a surrender in a case in which you are wanted by the police. It is possible that your lawyer might be able to arrange a desk appearance ticket with the arresting officer. Such arrangements, however, can go awry if the police officer's supervisor rejects the request for a desk appearance ticket.

On the other hand, the police will frequently hold out the prospect of receiving a Desk Appearance Ticket to people they are trying to lure into the Precinct to arrest on serious charges or on less serious charges for which they know full well they are not going to issue a Desk Appearance Ticket.

I can't tell you the number of times I have received telephone calls from prospective clients who have been contacted by the police. They call me out of a sense of uneasiness about dealing with the police without a lawyer (as well they should ).

In a huge majority of these cases, they have been all but promised Desk Appearance Tickets by the police officers who have called them. The great majority of these cases I know right away are not going to result in Desk Appearance Tickets. But the prospect of getting a Desk Appearance Ticket is something that the police know is something that will make it easier to convince people to voluntarily surrender to them.

Therefore it gets suggested as a "strong possibility" by the police in more cases than it will actually happen these days.

Equally troubling, if not more so, than police exaggerations of the likelihood of a Desk Appearance Ticket, are the stories I have been told of lawyers seeking to be retained who have promised that they will be successful in getting a Desk Appearance Ticket for the client in a case in which one is simply not ever going to be provided.

The bottom line is that, at least in New York City, when you start to hear promises of Desk Appearance Tickets being written, whether those promises are coming from a police officer or a lawyer, be wary. Desk Appearance Tickets are becoming more and more an endangered species.

Don A. Murray, Esq.
Shalley & Murray

Don Murray is one of the founding partners of Shalley & Murray, a New York criminal defense law firm with offices in New York City and Westchester County. Mr. Murray is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has been practicing criminal defense in New York for 18 years. Any questions or comments about this article can be directed to him directly at 718-268-2171.

You generally must be an "angel" to be issued a desk appearance ticket.