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Why aren't there more self surrenders?

By David Oscar Markus

Brian Tannebaum has this interesting post on self surrendering defendants to face charges. He argues that defense lawyers should be able to voluntarily surrender a defendant when that person and the lawyer know about the charges in advance:

The purpose of an arrest is to take the defendant into custody and present them before a judge or have them bonded out immediately. It's not a damn prize or game.And I'm tired of prosecutors telling me "I'm not going to interfere with their desire to arrest your client." What are you all so afraid of? Tell the officers/agents, I know this defense attorney, he keeps his word, let his client surrender. If they say no, so be it.

This issue actually comes up quite frequently in this District. Wouldn't it save everyone a great deal of time and resources if there was more cooperation on self surrendering a defendant? What say you SDFLA readers?

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).