Legal Question in Criminal Law in Iowa

Re: state to state powers

Issue a bench warrant which will sit there waiting for you until you decide that you don't need to wear your seat belt, or signal for a left turn and get stopped. Then, if you get picked up on a Saturday, you'll sit in jail until Monday. Then you'll get to face the judge, and everyone will be real angry with you.

Re: state to state powers

I am not an Iowa lawyer. You would need to consult a lawyer licensed in Iowa, familiar with Iowa laws, to get help understanding what could happen there.

In Minnesota, if you pay a "ticket" that is the equivalent of a guilty plea, and if it happened with use of a motor vehicle, a drivers license suspension and record could result, in addition to the criminal court record.

If you fail to resolve the matter one way or another -- either by appearing in court or by pleading guilty (paying fine) -- then a warrant for your arrest would be issued.

When an out-of-state court issues an arrest warrant, it might or might not be the kind that would result in your arrest in a different state, to be held for extradition. Those are relatively expensive for the jurisdiction seeking the person, so tend to be used for more serious crimes, rarely for traffic offenses, for example.

In Minnesota, if someone fails to appear on a "petty misdemeanor" charge (a "payable offense") they can be found guilty by default, without a trial or plea. Compare that to a criminal charge (a misdemeanor or felony) -- for those a person cannot be convicted without a trial or guilty plea. Sometimes criminal charges never result in conviction where the person has an arrest warrant out on them, but is not found and brought to court for several years.

If your public criminal record is your main concern, you may want to determine whether you can be "convicted" without a trial, by default, in Iowa. As a Minnesota lawyer, I do not know the answer to that question. Good luck.