Legal Question in Criminal Law in Tennessee

A mittimus is an order from a court (a judge) to a jailer, ordering the jailer to take a person into custody.

A typical example: A person pleads guilty to a crime, the judge allows the person to stay free on bond pending sentencing. After a sentencing hearing, the judge ordered the person to go to jail for ten days. The judge can sign a mittimus that simple states:

To the Jailer of X County:

You are hereby ordered to take John H. Defendant into your custody to begin service of his ten day sentence.

/signed/ Judge

The signed mittimus is the jailer's "permission slip" to accept the prisoner into the jail.

Most courts do not use a mittimus anymore, instead the "judgment" itself (the written order finding the person guilty and ordering imposition of a sentence) is used at the authority to put a defendant in jail. In Clarksville, we "jail on judgments."

But there may be a situation such as this:

A Defendant is convicted of a crime, sentenced to ten days in jail, then ordered to report to jail at a set future day, perhaps thirty days later. Thirty days later, the Defendant fails to surrender himself to the jail. Three weeks later, the Defendant might appear in court after the sheriff picks him up, and the judge orders the ten days to begin immediately. The original judgment ordered the Defendant to report on a day that has already passed, so the judge might issue a mittimus as a separate authorization for the jailer to put the Defendant behind bars.