Outside courtroom 204 in Louisville’s Hall of Justice, a handful of people waited nervously for a bailiff to unlock the doors.
They all had outstanding arrest warrants for failing to show up to a previous court date, but were told if they showed up on this day, it would get dismissed.
Southern Indiana resident Tabitha was seated next to an advocate from the social justice group Standing Up for Racial Justice. Tabitha told her she still wasn’t not sure this wasn’t a trap, that she wasn’t going to end up in handcuffs. LPM News is not using Tabitha’s full name to protect her privacy.
“When I woke up this morning, I was still kind of teetering on, ‘Are you coming? Are you not going? Like, what are you going to do?’” she said.
Tabitha had already talked with people from the court’s nonprofit partners and her friends that morning. They all encouraged her to show up, but she was skeptical.
“Never have I ever heard of anything where you can show up at the courthouse with a warrant and you’re not going to go to jail,” she said.
Tabitha told the advocate next to her that all she could do was trust her word that things were going to turn out OK. Less than an hour later, she left with her case dismissed, and the arrest warrant hanging over her head — keeping her living in fear even as she got sober and tried to turn her life around — wiped away.
Limiting barriers
The amnesty docket started in 2022 as a partnership between prosecutors, the Jefferson County District Court and community partners, including local nonprofits like the ACLU of Kentucky, Standing up for Racial Justice and Louisville Community Bail Fund.
Chanelle Helm, a cofounder of the bail fund and head of Black Lives Matter Louisville, said organizers wanted to prevent people with minor offenses from ending up in the downtown jail, where people were dying at an alarming rate.
“We looked at the people who had passed away and many of those people were unhoused or they had drug issues,” Helm said. “They also just had like traffic court, things like that, just very small issues that were not necessary for arrest.”
The amnesty docket presents a solution to the hundreds of people in Louisville and Southern Indiana who had outstanding arrest warrants in Jefferson County for minor crimes, some years old. People apply to get their case onto the amnesty docket and the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office screens them for eligibility.
People accused of a violent crime, a gun charge or Class A, B or C felony are not eligible for the docket.
Josh Abner, a spokesperson for the County Attorney’s Office, said the amnesty docket can “limit barriers” for people to resolve their cases and “support efforts to make victims of crime financially whole.”
“The creation of these dockets does not absolve responsibility of an individuals’ alleged conduct or mean unrelated warrants will not be served during this time,” he said.
The community partners can help individuals on the docket pay restitution to victims. They can also provide rides to and from the courthouse.
Since its start almost three years ago, the docket has helped hundreds of people resolve old cases and warrants. More than 170 people showed up during the three-day event last year.
Helm said coaching people through the process and getting them to overcome the fear of walking into the Hall of Justice with an outstanding warrant continues to be one of the toughest challenges. Even when it’s advocates, not the court, telling people about the opportunity, some don’t believe it.
“It frustrates me that we have all this support out here and people don’t believe in community,” Helm said. “We really get individualized when things go wrong and happen and don’t think that I can reach out to someone.”
The scramble
As Tabitha and others were let into the courtroom, they took a seat in the rows of wooden benches typically reserved for the audience.
Katelyn Becker, an assistant county attorney, explained how the amnesty docket works.
“No matter what’s going to happen here today, if you are here [for] your case we’re going to go ahead and set aside your warrant,” Becker said. “We might resolve [your case] today, we might pass it to another date depending on what we need to do on it.”
In addition to getting their failure to appear warrants quashed, the people who attend the amnesty docket have an opportunity to resolve their underlying cases. They can choose to plead guilty in exchange for lower fines or other conditions.
Becker pointed to a team of public defenders sitting at the opposing table.
“The way we’ve been doing it is we’ve just been handing the cases to them and they’ve been talking to you,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to continue to have a public defender on the case, they’re just doing it as a service for this specialty docket.”
After an attorney called the roll and the judge read everyone their rights, it kicked off a mad scramble.
Becker passed a crate of case files for everyone who hadn’t showed up yet to the advocates working the docket. They hurriedly moved back out to the bench in the hallway and started going down the list, calling and texting each person.
Stephanie Johnson, an organizer with the criminal justice reform group VOCAL-KY, was able to reach a man named Christopher.
“We’re actually just calling for your amnesty court date today,” Johnson told him. “It’s actually right now.”
Christopher said he was in a therapy session, but promised to come as soon as it's over. He declined an offer to pick him up or order an Uber or Lyft to his address, a service the partner organizations offer to everyone.
Not every phone call was as successful as that one.
Helm, the advocate with Black Lives Matter Louisville, texted with a man who said he was in the hospital.
“I’m like, you’re going to need to show me something so I can get this warrant set aside and get this taken care of,” Helm said.
The man has had a warrant out for his arrest since 2015, when he failed to show up to court for a traffic offense.
'It’s not a set-up'
Back inside the courtroom, many of the people before the judge for traffic violations ended up having to pay small fines: $25, $50 or $75 per offense.
A few people had misdemeanor drug possession charges and they received a one-year suspended sentence. That means they don’t have to do any jail time unless they get arrested again within the next year.
After a bit of a wait, Judge Josephine Bucker called No. 22, Tabitha’s case.
Tabitha said she felt her nerves subside as she entered the courtroom with her attorney from the Public Defender’s Office.
When prosecutors called the complaining witness from the courtroom, she said she didn’t know what they’re talking about. So, without someone willing to press charges, there was no case against Tabitha.
“Dismissed, with your stipulation of probable cause on the record today,” Buckner ruled. “Alright, and we’ll set aside that bench warrant.”
As Tabitha walked out of the courtroom, Buckner wished her luck.
“Turns out, you know, my outcome was a lot better than what I could have even expected,” Tabitha said.
She said she picked up the charge about a year earlier when she was in the grips of drug addiction.
Her original court date was set during the busy season at the factory in Southern Indiana where she works.
“I chose the warrant over not losing my job,” she explained. “Because if I lose my job then I’m going to be right back to active addiction and right back to the old things.”
Now, Tabitha is sober and taking classes at a community college. The warrant, though, had been hanging over her head, sending fear through her every time she saw a police officer.
“It’s constantly looking over your shoulder, it’s always wondering like, ‘Is today going to be that day?’” she said. “Louisville Metro jail is a monster. I do not want to spend another hour in that place, much less gosh knows how long until I get this warrant taken care of.”
Tabitha said getting out from under the warrant is another step toward rebuilding her life.
And while it was scary at first, she said she’d encourage anyone with a warrant to take advantage of the program.
“I sat here and watched 14 people go home today,” she said. “If you get a call about an amnesty docket, it’s not a set-up, they are for real, they just want to help you.”
The future of the docket
In total, about 50 people showed up over the three days of the amnesty docket in March to have their warrants dismissed. Each of them left either with their case settled or a new court date.
Johnson, with VOCAL-KY, said they’d love to move to quarterly or even monthly events to work with more people.
“Like we had one lady, her sister got in a car accident, so she wasn’t able to make it her day,” Johnson said. “We have to be able to accommodate these things.”
Advocates have also been pushing to move the amnesty docket to public libraries across Jefferson County, which they say would alleviate some people’s fear of walking into a courthouse with an arrest warrant.
Johnson said the goal is to have fewer people going to jail and having their lives upended because of minor offenses.
