Get arrested.

The Frederick News-Post publishes daily arrest logs, lists of people who have been arrested and processed at the Frederick County Adult Detention Center, along with their charges and release/bail status.

We get these lists straight from the detention center and run them as space allows. They can get pretty long (22 names on Oct. 9, for example), so it might take a few weeks, but we eventually print them all. Even if an arrested person works for The News-Post.

The arrest log is a popular read. Folks like to see if anyone they know is up to no good. For something so cut and dried (just a list, really), it's a real talker.

Sometimes we get calls from people who would prefer not to receive this kind of publicity. We are sympathetic, but generally unwavering. Unless police tell us they weren't arrested, their names go in.

We also get calls from people who want to know why we don't follow up on all these arrests. Why don't we report when the charges are dropped, or when the person is found guilty -- or not guilty?

Good question.

If only it were that easy.

Every arrest by a law enforcement agency in Frederick County is processed through the detention center. That keeps it simple. The detention center provides a list. We print the list.

After that, it gets complicated. Imagine one door to enter a room, then two doors to leave it, then multiple doors after that. That's the post-arrest process, also known as the judicial system.

Everyone has a bail hearing and is assigned a court date. Most people have that hearing before a District Court commissioner. Some cases are heard by a judge.

Less serious crimes are generally sent to District Court. But a misdemeanor offender has the right to request a jury trial which can only take place in Circuit Court, so right there the trail can get murky.

Buzz Working, criminal supervisor in the Circuit Court clerk's office, and our court reporter, Kate Leckie, explained the process to me.

For just about everyone, the criminal justice process begins with a pretrial hearing, set four to six weeks after the bail hearing. Some people have two or three such hearings as their lawyers try to negotiate a resolution. At pretrial hearings, defendants can either enter a plea (as most do) or opt for a judge or jury trial.

"Probably 90 percent of cases plead," Working said. "Going before the jury is rolling the dice."

The accused has multiple ways to plead.

In addition to the standard guilty-not guilty, the case might be put on the stet, or inactive, docket. That's usually for a person who committed a misdemeanor and has a clean record. The state puts the case on the inactive docket for three years; if the person stays out of trouble, the charge is dropped.

Or the state might find it has insufficient evidence against someone with a clean record, so the case might be nolle prosequi, which means the prosecution ends.

Or a person might enter an Alford plea, a special type of guilty plea in which he or she acknowledges the state has enough evidence to convict, but does not admit guilt.

Or the state's attorney may decide to have a case heard by the grand jury. If the grand jury indicts, the case is automatically forwarded to Circuit Court without the need for a preliminary hearing.

In any event, most District Court cases are wrapped up within 60 days -- or moved to Circuit Court, Working said.

Circuit Court cases can take much longer, especially if they involve DNA or forensic evidence, but are usually wrapped up within 18 months.

"The court wants to get cases through quickly," Working said. They don't want to detain people whose guilt is in doubt."

Every week, hundreds of cases are listed on the Frederick County courts' dockets. These include traffic citations, civil cases, juvenile, divorce and custody issues, as well as all the folks named on the arrest log.

But a neat list of all the outcomes is not produced at the end of each day.

Instead, each case must be researched on the Maryland Judiciary Case Search (casesearch.courts.state.md.us), which has records that go back about 10 years. Public access computers are available at the courthouse, as are all the public records. So our readers can learn the outcome of any individual arrest.

We do not have the time or the manpower to track down the outcome of every arrest. It would make another interesting list, but we believe our court reporters' time is better spent focusing on getting details of the most unusual and interesting cases.

For now, however, in a neat bit of symmetry, you can see all the arrest logs in the paper but not on the web. And you can find every outcome on the web -- but not in the paper.

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