Issue/Deny a General Citation

Once a Magistrate Order based on a General Citation is Complete, it can then be issued through the SUMMARY tab by a user with Issuing Authority. To issue a General Citation, the user must find Probable Cause on at least one Offense and enter a Date Issued. Once a General Citation is submitted with these fields, and other information detailed below, the Citation is issued and Served.

Before you start:

Only users with the proper rights can issue a General Citation. The various fields related to issuance will not display for users not possessing Issuing Authority.
To be issued, a General Citation must contain a Defendant, Complainant, Court information, a Citation Number, and at least one Misdemeanor or Traffic Offense. An Infraction cannot be entered on a General Citation as the sole Offense.
A General Citation cannot be issued with a Felony if the Defendant is a person.

Court information (Courtroom, Court Date, Session, Time, and Type) is required to issue a General Citation.
For an Offense where Probable Cause is not found by the Issuing Authority, select No from the Probable Cause dropdown related to the Offense. For more details on this subject, see Finding Probable Cause below.
If No Probable Cause is to be found on all offenses, a simple method is to use the Deny Process button directly from the SUMMARY tab.
Certain offenses require CVR information. A General Citation cannot be issued with one of these offenses without accompanying CVR data.
Once a General Citation is issued, certain data is protected from edits by any user besides the issuing authority, proxies thereof, or administrators. See Understanding Process Archiving for more on this subject.
Offense data transmitted to NCAWARE via an interface with a local system (i.e. Mecklenburg County) behaves differently than Offense data entered directly into NCAWARE. Click here for more details.

1. Either search for or add a General Citation that has a status of Complete.
2. Once the General Citation is retrieved from the PROCESS SEARCH RESULTS screen, or added, click the SUMMARY tab.
3. The SUMMARY tab displays. Click the Edit Summary button.
4. The SUMMARY DETAIL screen displays. Enter/select information into the following required fields to issue the General Citation:

Note: Process Tracking fields do not display on a General Citation since a Citation is automatically Served upon issuance.

1. Once the above fields are populated, enter any relevant information into the Process Information and Law Enforcement Information areas of the screen. For more Help on these areas, see Edit Summary of General Citation.
2. Once the entry of the SUMMARY DETAIL screen is complete, click the Edit button.

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The SUMMARY tab returns. The General Citation is now issued and assigned a Criminal Record Number (CR) and a status of Served.

The default view of the Citation changes from the PROCESS TAB VIEW to the CASE SUMMARY TAB VIEW.

Any forms related to the Citation, including generated Subpoenas, can be printed. Subpoena data can be viewed on the SUBPOENA tab of the CASE SUMMARY TAB VIEW.

Finding Probable Cause - On a General Citation, Probable Cause is found on individual Offenses. To find No Probable Cause for an individual Offense or multiple Offenses, select No for any number of the following fields: Probable Cause Offense 1, Offense 2 (if applicable). Once completed, click the Edit button.

A selection of Yes must be made for Probable Cause for at least one Offense to issue a General Citation.
An entry of No for all Offenses will result in a process status of Denied. Magistrate Orders based on General Citations are assigned a File Number and transmitted to ACIS upon a setting to Denied status (note).
If No Probable Cause is to be found on all offenses, a simple method is to use the Deny Process button directly from the SUMMARY tab.

For a listing of associated rules for this topic, click here.