Sheriff makes push to add full-time magistrate in Appomattox

Appomattox County Sheriff Donald Simpson is working toward the goal of bringing a full-time magistrate and a lock-up space to the county. Giving an update at the Sept. 18 meeting of the Appomattox County Board of Supervisors (BOS), Simpson emphasized the need for a magistrate at the Sheriff’s Office and voiced some frustration with the process as well as optimism after recent talks with authorities.

The lack of a full-time magistrate in the county has been an ongoing circumstance since Jan. 1, 2012, when Appomattox’s jail closed after the opening of the Blue Ridge Regional Jail in Amherst. The magistrate system then transitioned to a shared basic phone call video process. This has resulted in delays in processing arrests and some residents unable to be served in a timely manner. Simpson said the county had “occasional coverage” but that declined in 2021 and 2022 with no coverage for months. He described the situation as a “public safety issue.”

“The public is not being served properly by our current magistrate system, period,” Simpson said. “I have documented in the past, just since January, over 30 — and this is just a quick search; I could dig deeper and find more — but at least 30 times that I have documented where citizens have requested magistrate assistance, and it has either required an officer to come in off the road to assist them with simple tasks such as faxing, paper, pens, or they have been flat-out told that no one can help them and they need to go to Buckingham, Prince Edward, Charlotte, somewhere like that. So, our citizens are coming to the magistrate for help and being turned away.”

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