No arrest warrant needed for defendant already in jail

ANCHORAGE — A state appeals court struck down a Caswell man’s appeal last week, arguing that it was fine the judge didn’t issue a warrant for his arrest since he was already in jail.

Siegfried Pedersen was arrested Sept. 13, 2009, charged with firing a gun at a neighbor’s house off Caswell Lakes Road during an altercation stemming from a “Children at Play” sign being erected in the neighborhood. Later, he was charged with a similar set of charges for a similar incident with a neighbor.

In both cases, after a jury trial he was eventually found guilty.

“Instead of issuing a warrant or a summons, the judge issued an order requiring Pedersen to be transported to the Palmer court for arraignment on the indictment,” and thus the court failed to “obtain jurisdiction” over Pedersen, state appeals court judge Joel Bolger wrote in explaining Pedersen’s main point on appeal.

Bolger made short work of that argument.

“There was no need to issue an arrest warrant because Pedersen was already in custody,” he wrote. “The superior court simply ordered Pedersen to be transported to the court so that he could be arraigned on the indictment. We conclude that the superior court obtained jurisdiction over Pedersen when he was personally transported to the court for arraignment.”

And, anyway, Bolger wrote, the time to object to that sort of thing would have been before Pedersen’s trial, not after his conviction.