If you are on probation and you are picked up by the police on a new case, or you are picked up by the police or the probation department for a technical violation of your probation you are entitled to a certain amount of due process from that detention.
Within a short period of time after the detention, you are entitled to a hearing to determine whether you should be held in custody while awaiting to see the judge or waiting to have a full hearing with the judge. If the trial commissioner or the judge, think that you should not wait in custody for your full hearing, the trial commissioner or the judge can release you. This is proceeding is called a Gagnon I hearing. In Philadelphia county, the defendant is not present at the Gagnon I hearing.If the commissioner or judge rule that you must stay in custody until the Gagnon II hearing, this is called a detainer.
After the Gagnon I hearing is complete, a final hearing, the Gagnon II hearing, must be scheduled within 30 days of the initial hearing. This final hearing is where the defendant goes before the judge and the judge decides whether to violation the defendant, and if so, gives the defendant a new sentence.
The judge can violate the defendant for either a technical or direct violation. An example of a technical violation is not reporting to the probation officer, dirty urine, or not complying with any term or condition of the probation. An example of a direct violation is a new conviction in a new case. Usually the new sentences for direct violations are greater then new sentences for technical, but the judge can always give a big sentence for a technical violation.
When I had a Gagnon I hearing. It was done at the probation office in the presence of my probation officer and their supervisor, and not in court.
There is no requirement that the Gagnon I hearing be conducted by a judge. If the judicial district in which your probation is located has approved the practice, a probation officer and a trial commissioner or magisterial judge can sit in the Common Pleas Court Judge’s place. However, if you become incarcerated as a result of the Gagnon I hearing and you have a new open bill, your attorney can file a motion for a hearing with the Common Pleas Court Judge and ask that you be allowed to be on the street until the outcome of your open case. Most lawyers call that a detainer hearing, but it is actually a second Gagnon I hearing.
My husband is in jail. He had his gagnon 1 hearing on oct. 20, 2009. It got boosted to a gagnon 2 hearing. On Oct. 21 he went to his prelim hearing to see if his new charges would be withdrawn or if he would go to trial. Well they got withdrawn. Under his affidivant he would stay detained until his charges got disposed of. Well it did. He is still in jail his gagnon 2 hearing is not until march 30, 2010. My question is can they keep him in jail until then. He did have 2 technical violations against him now he has one. Is it tru they can only hold him for 120 days started when he went to his gagnon 1 hearing?
If there is nothing else holding him, he has to get a hearing within 30 days of the date that nothing else was holding him or his lawyer can get his detainer certified.