So I open the inbox this morning and I see that Bill King is once again trying to remain relevant by supporting more regulations on the bail bond industry. Here is a snippet of his latest regulatory intrusion scheme.
Harris County is experiencing a spike in violent crimes. Numerous media reports have shown that a significant portion of the increase in violent crimes have been committed by individuals who have been released on bail. One of the reasons for the increase in the number of defendants accused of violent crimes being released is that some bail bondsmen have been discounting and/or financing the fee to obtain a bond.
Historically, bail bondsmen have required a 10% fee to post a bond for a defendant. For example, if a judge sets a bond of $100,000, a defendant would normally be required to pay the bondsman a fee of $10,000. But there are numerous reports of some bondsmen either deeply discounting the fee or writing a bond for a small down payment and financing the balance. By engaging in these practices these bail bondsmen are effectively reducing the bond required by the court and financing a part of the fee creates an incentive for defendants to commit other crimes to make their payments.
That’s crap. Bovine processed hay. And another example of the self-professed unapologetically liberal Bill King.
Let’s be clear. The responsibility for any and all crime committed by people out on bail lies solely with the person committing the crime. Period.
Now, if you want to argue that SOME people that are charged with committing violent crimes should not be released on bail, great. Argue it. Judges have the discretion to not release people into the streets if they are deemed to be risks to society.
Blaming a bail bonding company for the crimes committed by criminals is crap. Bovine processed hay.
But typical Bill King. His SAM party has endorsed one candidate in the November elections. A lobbyist in the Austin area for HD-19. Go figure. BTW, his SAM party is being financed by the Arnolds. Yippee.
How about we focus on the policies of the Harris County Commissioners Court and the actions of the Democrat judges in the county if we want to stop the madness that we see reported on the news every single day. Crime is completely out of control in Harris County and you can lay the blame for the increase at the feet of those that have emboldened criminals.
Let’s face it. Criminals are no longer afraid of law enforcement in Harris County. Want to stop it? Change the politicians in power.
Don’t blame the bail bond industry. BTW, why is 10% a magical number? Why not outlaw bail bonds entirely if they are the issue?
They aren’t the issue but it’s easy to focus on an industry that few of us will ever interact with. Just say no to the unapologetically moderate.
I concur.
I have a better idea. Quit trying to fool the general public. If you tell someone that bail is $1000, then require that someone actually post $1000, not a nominal $100.
I’m sick of hearing that someone is required to post $100,000 bond for some heinous crime, only to realize a few minutes later that they can walk if they can scrape up $10,000.
Then you can let the bail bondsmen do what they want. But I bet they’ll think about it a lot harder if they have to post the full amount up front!
I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure that the bail bondsman has to pony up the bond amount to the court. That is why they work hard to make certain the defendant shows up for court so they can get their money back. Or maybe they are simply on the hook for the full amount? Randy will know if he checks back in.
I don’t know if Harris County has any local rules different from the general rule, but for the general rule the bail bondsmen are allowed to use real property as surity for the bonds. The occupation code allows bond amounts up to 10x the value of the real property in aggergate, and the property value has to be kept updated with apprasials.
As long as they have unleveraged value remaining they are good to go without having to give anything to the court.
Good article! Most people do not understand bail bond law, how it works, that is including criminal defense lawyers and criminal court judges. I see this frequently whenever discussing the matter with those in the legal profession. This is a complicated and little known aspect of the criminal justice legal system having managed the day to day operations of my brother’s bail bonding company for almost 20 years. I doubt any of these people talking about the bail industry know how it works. And knowing how it works in minute detail is critical to properly managing the system and fixing what has been broken in recent years.
I am not optimistic about it being fixed anytime soon. Randy
Regarding DA Kim Ogg and her Assistant District Attorney’s as it relates to criminal prosecution of habitual violent offenders.
My brother and I researched the data, as it relates to the 156 Victims who had been murdered by offenders who had been out on bond as identified by Houston Crime Stoppers . We discovered that in many of these cases, the Assistant District Attorney in many of the cases filed a Motion to Deny Bail. Of course the District Judge in these courts disregarded the request by our DA’s office to Deny Bail for these defendants.
I suspect that in cases where there was no record of a Motion to Deny Bail by the DA’s office, there may have likely been a request that was not filed in the record or the Assistant DA may have made an oral request when the defendant stood before the judge and it was never recorded in the file.
Just remember that many of these cases are handled by career prosecutors like Jim Lietner for example. I remember seeing his name frequently. These career prosecutors have worked for Ogg, Anderson, Lykos, and so on. It is my belief that Jim is a fine man and has the interest of public safety in mind on these cases.
It is my sincere belief that Assistant District Attorney’s in these cases that deal with habitual violent offenders routinely make a request to Deny Bail for these defendants. I don’t have personal knowledge in these cases, but it my belief having after having attended many bail hearing over to 20 years that I routinely visited these courts weekly. (1999-2017)
I do not believe that blaming the District Attorney for the uptick in violent crime is justified. Especially in light that DA Ogg has made requests for additional staffing that has been denied by the Commissioners Court. Just remember that most of the defendants take a plea bargain and never go to trial.
The Commissioners Court needs to grand DA Ogg her request.
Randy
It might prove helpful to see just how many motions to deny bail were filed altogether, not just those ending with a tragedy, and how many led to a judge actually denying bail because the context could make a big difference. An overzealous ADA might be filing such motions for many cases despite a lack of specific danger to the community or conversely, a timid ADA might not be providing the judges with enough tangible specifics to rule in their favor.
Many of us might also care to know which judges are most apt to deny or accept these motions, thankfully those in the democrat primary started the process of getting rid of such judges by essentially firing 10 of their own, an 11th is pending in the runoff. But if you have specific numbers for any of this, providing the data would be more persuasive than generalities.
Kim Ogg is a Soros funded democrat though, her initial requests for over 20 million more tax dollars was denied several years ago. It’s been said this was because she was caught cooking the numbers to inflate how many cases each ADA worked, it was shown she was giving personal friends large raises at the expense of those who did the work, and she said she wanted to hire dozens more ADAs to investigate local police; her desire to increase staff numbers by 40% without a lot more detail to her proposal failed. Still, Commissioner’s Court gave her almost 7 million of the request back then and this week gave her another 7.2 million. Hopefully voters will make a better choice for DA in the future.
Yes! She’s a Soros backed troublemaker. Recall she dismissed most all of the cases against the rioters at the DNC/blm rally downtown? Her, Boudin in San Francisco, Krasner in Philadelphia, and others were installed to sow chaos, to foment crime in the streets, and boy are they good at their jobs.
Yes, Ogg asked for more money for her department. Of course she did! That has little to do with public safety and more with providing more political patronage jobs, just like Dora’s apartment dwelling friend who got the $ 11M contract. I guess she was planning on employing her cats to fulfill that contract?
Ogg, Dora, Chaz Bono the dude who screwed up the elections, the whole lot of them need to be tossed out to Make. Harris County. Safe. Again. Its sad that the largest county in Texas has just devolved into a dangerous freak show.
I would like to know who is Maj. General Noriega on Hidalgo staff that runs the entire IT software and staffing? What is that persons first name? Was it the past Legislator from Texas?
Yes, former Sen. Rick Noriega. Why he divorced Melissa I have no clue. She’s a good woman.
Well, I can now understand why the glitch and problems happening in that area under Maj.Gen Rick Noriega (that is old school habits coming back to play all over again). Good friends with Adrian Garcia and Gonzales…its a brotherhood club that works together in cahoots (just ask Ben M). Well tomorrow where I am attending a meeting they better now say any nonse around me about Republicans because I am ready to hit back and hard. Too much corruption going on in Houston and the Hispanic with the Black Brotherhood Club are stronger and the Anglo weaklings Clubs are out to lunch time…constantly having the same talking points nothing has changed so I have to be out there mouthing off. Take care David. LULAC and the Hispanic now wants a “single” City Council districts like they said is in San Antonio and many other parts across Texas. David do an Article on that for me.
The Hispanic/LULAC leaders planning on having suit to add their representation to the City Council because they said they are lacking of color identity on that board. They said that Members-at-Large are predominantely “whites” and its unfair and that is why San Antonio did away with that format and it added more Latinos to their City Council and it now represents what lives in those areas. They showed how Dallas is single council and Austin, Ft. Worth and El Paso all of them became “single Council” and now better to represent their areas. They also stated that Members at Large does nothing except go out to lunches while City Council members do the work in the communties.
On their Hispanic Panel last Saturday they had: LULAC President Doming Garcia (Att.at law), Dr. Mark P. Jones, PhD (Rice), Yolanda N. Flores (Att.at law), Dr. Jeronimo Cortina, PhD (UofH). I told them don’t blame the “whites” go find your funding monies and Candidates and give them something to run on instead of hot air like I am hearing in this room. Ooops!! they did agree with me. Well David what is your take on the Single Member City council representation going forward?
Only a liberal like King Bill would lay the blame for the actions of criminals on private businesses. Bail is supposed to be set so people accused of crimes will show up for their court hearings, not to bankrupt them without a trial or force the accused to accept plea deals.
Bail companies provide the money to let the accused go about their business while waiting for their hearings and trials, such companies assuming the responsibility of getting the accused to show up when required. If such a company wants to assume the risk for 1% or 20% in fees, the contract they enter into with the accused is between those parties and shouldn’t be unnecessarily restricted to achieve some liberal social scheme as King Bill appears to advocate.
Judges have a great deal of discretion in setting bail or even in giving PR bonds, and it should be based on actual, articulable danger to the community to comply with the 8th and 14th Amendments. Defaulting to an unconstitutional cash bond schedule got Harris County in trouble leading to the federal settlement for misdemeanor cases but judges are still empowered to do the right thing for proven dangers to the community, those repeat felons being released on the cheap are just proof that as flawed as the last set of judges were, many of the incumbents need to find work elsewhere. I extend that belief to our current DA whose policies should be to require her prosecutors to make better cases for holding some of the truly dangerous offenders until their day in court.
The democrats blame shifting to bail bondsmen is particularly insidious. This blame shifting is actually wanting to control gross revenues for non-economic reasons. It shows the depths of their unwillingness to accept responsibility for their actions and lack of concern for those they impact.
At least with AOC and the like they attempt to at least poorly argue economic reasons for their unwise policy goals and want to see high gross revenues for governmental tax and spend purposes.
Sad when local politics are left of AOC.
If we’re going to do any new regulation regarding bail bond companies, it ought to involve the money. As I understand it, the bail is for a two-fold purpose, to guarantee the accused will make all court appearances, and also, that the accused agrees to stay out of trouble, in other words, agrees to not commit crimes while the court process for the 1st criminal accusation plays out in court. If the defendant violates this second part, and commits a new crime, then maybe the bail bond company should have to forfeit some or all of the first bail bond.
So let’s take that $ 100,000 defendant. Whether Kubosh or other bondsman collects 1%, or 10% from the accused, that’s their choice to make as a private business. Having said that, if someone they bail out is convicted of the original crime AND of a new crime while out on bail for the first crime, the bondsman ought to feel some real economic pain from that.
Making this a part of the bail bond system would force bondsmen to think twice about who they bail out of jail in the first place. If they auntie or mama won’t put up their houses as collateral to get their kid out of jail, then maybe the bondsmen should similarly be wary of putting THEIR money on the line.