Warrick County Courts

Warrick County runs three trial courts, and all three sit in one building in Boonville: the Judicial Center at One County Square. The county describes them as Warrick Circuit Court, Warrick Superior Court No. 1 and Warrick Superior Court No. 2 — three courts, four courtrooms, and a magistrate the three judges appoint jointly to serve all of them.

Warrick County belongs to Indiana’s Judicial District 26, which also takes in Gibson, Posey and Vanderburgh Counties. That grouping is administrative and does not move cases across county lines. Where the alleged offense happened is what puts a case in Boonville rather than downtown Evansville, which is why plenty of people who live and work in Evansville find themselves driving east on IN-62 to answer a charge.

Three courts, and which one gets your case

Warrick County publishes its allocation rule in plain language, and it is worth reading before you assume anything from the charge on your paperwork. Each of the three courts is a court of general jurisdiction that presides over every type of case, subject to three exceptions the county states outright: all juvenile delinquency cases are heard by Warrick Circuit Court; all small claims cases are divided between Superior Court No. 1 and Superior Court No. 2; and the Warrick County Drunk Driving/Drug Court is presided over by Superior Court No. 1.

Read that backwards and it tells you something useful. On an ordinary criminal charge — misdemeanor or felony — there is no rule steering you to one court, so guessing from the offense level is a waste of time. The exceptions are the places where the building’s structure genuinely decides something: a juvenile delinquency matter is a Circuit Court case, and the county’s only published specialty criminal track lives in Superior Court No. 1.

Several functions sit in their own offices rather than with a single judge: Warrick County runs a Misdemeanor and Infraction Division, a Probation Division and a Small Claims Division from their own suites in the Judicial Center, and the Drunk Driving and Drug Program and the Court Substance Abuse Program operate off-site on West State Road 62. Suite numbers and direct lines move, so take them from the county’s own site rather than from here.

Whether a case can reach a specialty track, and whether it should, is a question worth raising in the first weeks rather than discovering at sentencing. It is a strategic decision with real consequences either way, not a form you tick.

What happens at your initial hearing, and the deadline it starts

Whichever of the three courts your case lands in, the first setting is an initial hearing, and Indiana Code 35-33-7-5 governs what happens there. The judicial officer must inform you, orally or in writing, of your right to retain counsel and a deadline for doing so; your right to assigned counsel at no expense if you are indigent; your right to a speedy trial; the amount and conditions of bail; your privilege against self-incrimination; the nature of the charge; and that a preliminary plea of not guilty is being entered on your behalf.

That preliminary plea hardens into a formal plea of not guilty 20 days after the initial hearing is completed, or 10 days if you are charged only with misdemeanors, unless you enter a different plea first.

The deadline is the part worth writing down. Under the same statute the court must tell you that if you intend to retain counsel you have 20 days if you are charged with a felony, or 10 days if the charges are misdemeanors only. The statute gives its own reason: there are deadlines for filing motions and raising defenses, and issues not raised by those deadlines are waived. A waived defense is not one you can revive later by hiring someone good.

On the timing of the hearing itself, Indiana Code 35-33-7-1 requires that a person arrested without a warrant be taken promptly before a judicial officer. If you make bail before the initial hearing, that hearing occurs within 20 calendar days of arrest — within 10 calendar days if the arrest was under IC 9-30-5, Indiana’s operating-while-intoxicated chapter. Where the arrest was made on a warrant and you were released under the warrant’s own terms, Indiana Code 35-33-7-4 sets the hearing within 20 days of arrest.

None of that is specific to Boonville — it is the same statute in every Indiana trial court. What is specific to Warrick County is that you may not know which of the three courts is yours until the case is filed, and the clock does not wait for that answer.

The Clerk is a different office from the court

The Clerk of the Courts is not the courtroom, and people lose a morning to that. Warrick County describes the Clerk as custodian of the court’s record and seal: the office that issues process, accepts the filings that commence litigation, enters the court’s judgments and orders, receives money in an official capacity, and makes certified copies of the record. If what you need is a filing, a payment or a copy of something, that is the office — and it is a different suite from the courtroom you were in.

The two also keep different hours, which is the part that catches people. We are not going to print either set here: office hours are exactly the kind of detail that changes without notice, and one wrong line on this page could cost someone a filing window. The county publishes both, and the link above is where they stay current.

What none of it governs is a hearing time. Office hours describe when staff answer the counter; a setting is when the judge expects you. Warrick County also lists two radio stations for court closings, WBNL 1540 AM and WIKY 104.1 FM, which is the channel to check on a bad-weather morning before deciding for yourself that court is off — and a closing moves your obligation rather than cancelling it.

The Judicial Center is not the historic Courthouse

Boonville’s county square has two buildings that look like they ought to be the courthouse, and only one of them holds the courtrooms.

The county’s directions are specific: the Judicial Center is on the north side of the historic Courthouse, on the northwest corner of 3rd and Main Streets, and the entrance is on the east side of the building, facing 3rd Street.

Parking is off 2nd Street, just north of Main Street. The county adds a warning that is easy to miss and expensive to learn the hard way: there are no public access doors on the west side of the Judicial Center. Coming from the lot, you walk around the building to the 3rd Street door. Build that walk and the screening line into whatever time you had planned to arrive.

How Jerry L. Garner works these courts

The firm’s principal office is at 223 Main Street in Rockport, a short drive south of Boonville, with a second office at 123 NW 4th Street, Suite 521, in downtown Evansville. Warrick County is home ground: the firm serves Boonville and Newburgh, and Boonville is where those cases are answered.

A county with three courts and four courtrooms works differently from a metropolitan docket. The same judges, the same prosecutor’s office and the same probation staff handle everything that comes through, which cuts both ways — nothing gets lost in volume, and nothing sloppy goes unnoticed either. What that rewards is preparation, and specifically preparation that starts before the first setting rather than after it.

Jerry L. Garner has spent more than three decades in the law, 23 of those years as an FBI Special Agent, and the part of that experience that pays off here is unglamorous. A probable-cause affidavit is a summary written to clear a low bar. It is not the file. The reports behind it, the timing, the notes, the things an officer chose not to write down — that is where a case is actually decided, and knowing how such a file gets assembled is knowing where to press on it.

If you have a setting at the Warrick County Judicial Center, or you have just been charged and do not yet know which of the three courts your case landed in, call (812) 301-6221. There is no charge for the first conversation, and the opening two weeks of a case are worth more than any two weeks that follow.