By Lisa Chmelecki,Staff Writer
Tri-county area has more than 4,000 warrants outstanding.

AUBURN – It happened during a robbery trial for a guy accused of stealing a few radios from his neighbor.

Phyllis Morse was a key witness for the defense.

After swearing to tell the truth, she testified that she was the defendant’s sister. She said she was with him when he bought the radios, saw him give the guy money.

She also told the jury that she was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, stationed at the Brunswick Naval Air Station as a licensed practical nurse. Some part of her testimony sounded fishy to someone.

The 40-year-old Auburn woman was arrested and charged with perjury. She posted bail, got a court date and never showed up.

More than 25 years later, Dianna Sulton Martinez is still on the run. A warrant charging that she failed to appear for her arraignment on June 2, 1978, sits in a file cabinet at the Androscoggin County dispatch center along with 2,137 others.

It most likely will stay there until Martinez, now 67, is pulled over for something such as speeding or running a red light.

Even then, she might get off. The county budget can afford only so many bus and airplane tickets to bring back suspected criminals who have fled Maine.

No time’

Lack of time and resources keeps local police departments from pursuing many warrants beyond knocking on a couple of doors.

Police go to all lengths to find suspects considered dangerous. They involve teams of officers, set up road blocks and notify police agencies in other parts of the country.

Searches for the seemingly less-threatening – people who owe fines for traffic violations or the woman who disappeared 27 years ago after being accused of lying on the witness stand – are often interrupted when a more urgent call comes over the radio.

Many never resume.

“It depends largely on the severity of the crime,” said Capt. Ray LaFrance of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s simply impossible to really hunt down every individual.”

LaFrance and others say outstanding warrants are simply a part of police business.

Androscoggin County has 2,138 of them. The number out of Oxford County hovers around 1,500, and Franklin County has 463.

“Burglary suspects, assault suspects, people who commit crimes against other people – those are the ones we’re mostly concerned with,” said Oxford County Chief Deputy James Davis. “There’s no time to actively pursue all of them.”

Armed robbery

Warrants are issued for a few reasons. Some are for unpaid fines. Others are for missed court dates, and a large percentage are for people who were never actually arrested.

The district attorney’s office waits to present some cases to the grand jury, a group of 15 to 23 people from each county who meet regularly to consider allegations that may warrant felony charges.

After someone is indicted by the grand jury, the person either gets a summons to appear in court, or, if police believe they may take off, they’ll get a warrant for their arrest.

Every original warrant is kept at the courthouse where it is issued. One copy is made and sent to the local sheriff’s department.

Before filing the copy, the department enters the information in a national computer system. With most cases, the police department that handled the investigation is the one responsible for finding the suspect.

Some warrants are served in five minutes. Others linger for decades.

In September 1974, Raymond Ford was indicted by an Androscoggin County grand jury on a charge of armed robbery. Police say he was visiting Maine from Massachusetts when he walked into a local Cumberland Farms, threatened the clerk with a handgun and took off with $150.

Court documents don’t say how long police looked for him, only that his last known address was in Fitchburg, Mass., and that he has managed to elude police for more than 30 years.

“Once a trail goes cold, it’s hard” said Lewiston police Sgt. David Chick. “New warrant lists are coming out all of the time. Unless a person has continuing criminal conduct, they can easily get lost.”

Using the Internet

Police agencies in larger cities have officers whose only job is to serve warrants. That’s not the case around here.

At the Lewiston Police Department, officers review new warrants during their daily briefings.

“A couple of guys may recognize a name and say, Let’s go get this one,'” Chick said. “They head out right away.”

The more difficult warrants may wait for a slow shift when officers have time to go hunting. They may squeeze in a couple of arrests before being called away to direct traffic at a fire scene, stop a burglary or talk to someone with a complaint about a barking dog.

“That’s why you hear those stories about someone with a 10-year-old warrant living right next to the police department,” Chick said.

The Internet could help track down some people, but local police say it’s not worth the time or money.

Search engines, such as ZabaSearch.com, allow people to type in a name and get a long list of addresses and phone numbers. More detailed information, such as driving records, employment and residential histories and credit checks, are available for $10 to $25.

Let’s take William Stockman, accused in 1978 of stealing three chain saws and two cans of gasoline from a home in Poland. He was indicted on charges of burglary and theft but he was gone by the time police arrived at the Portland motel listed as his address.

ZabaSearch.com turns up 176 people with his name, from Alabama to California, ranging in age from 27 to 105.

Investigators could spend hours going through the list and eventually find the right guy only to be told by the district attorney’s office that it’s not worth the money to bring him back to Maine.

“We have to look at the age of the warrant and ask, What would be the likelihood that we’d still be able to have a trial? Do we still have witnesses? Are they available?'” said Norm Croteau, the district attorney for Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties.

No magic year

The district attorney’s office is the only department that can get rid of warrants by dismissing charges.

Those decisions are occasionally made in the middle of the night when Croteau gets a call from a police department in another state. An officer has stopped someone with a warrant out of the tri-county area, and he needs to know if he should make the arrest.

Croteau’s decision depends on the severity of the crime, how old it is and the amount of money in the county’s extradition budget. The money in that budget comes from bail confiscated after someone fails to show up in court.

“It’s a limited account,” Croteau said. “If I know there is no way I can marshal witnesses, I’m not just going to play games.”

Despite these limitations, Croteau’s office rarely goes through the warrants looking for ones that would be impossible to prosecute. The last cleanup was in 1998 when Maine got a new computer system for its courts, and every warrant needed to be re-entered.

Croteau doesn’t remember how many charges were dismissed but he knows it wasn’t many.

“The state has a commitment to keep these things active,” he said. “People should not think there is going to be a magic year when they are free.”

That goes for people who owe fines, people who disappeared after posting bail, people who took off before they were ever arrested.

That goes for William Stockman, Raymond Ford and Dianna Sulton Martinez.