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Ark. Code Ann. § 16-13-703

Imprisonment

Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Velek v. State (City of Little Rock) (2006)

Most recently applied in Nikita Lee Mahoney, Kimberly Ann Snodgrass, Christopher Snodgrass, Detrick Brandon, Tina Marie Phares, and Dazarious Braggs, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated v. Mark Derrick, in His Official Capacity as District Judge for the 23rd Judicial District of the State of Arkansas (February 2022)

Acts 1995, No. 1262, § 4; 2003, No. 1765, § 9; 2013, No. 225, § 1.

How often courts cite this section

200620102020202210
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) When a defendant sentenced to pay a fine defaults in the payment thereof, or of any installment, the court, upon its own motion or that of the prosecuting attorney, may require him or her to show cause why he or she should not be imprisoned for nonpayment.

(2) The court may issue a warrant of arrest or summons for his or her appearance.

(3) Unless the defendant shows that his or her default was not attributable to a purposeful refusal to obey the sentence of the court or to a failure on his or her part to make a good-faith effort to obtain the funds required for payment, the court may order the defendant imprisoned in the county jail or other authorized institution designated by the court until the fine or specified part thereof is paid.

(4) The period of imprisonment shall not exceed one (1) day for each forty dollars ($40.00) of the fine, thirty (30) days if the fine was imposed upon conviction of a misdemeanor, or one (1) year if the fine was imposed upon conviction of a felony, whichever is the shorter period.

(5) The total amount of fines owed shall not automatically be reduced by the period of imprisonment, but the court may credit forty dollars ($40.00) for each day of imprisonment against the total fine, excluding any amount owed for restitution, the defendant has been sentenced to pay.

(6) This subsection is in addition to the revocation options contained in § 16-93-308.

(7) If the court determines that the default in payment of the fine is not attributable to the causes specified in subsection (c) of this section, the court may enter an order allowing the defendant additional time for payment, reducing the amount of each installment, or revoking the fine or the unpaid portion thereof in whole or in part.

Current official text: Arkansas General Assembly. Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Arkansas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.