February 24, 2010 • 24 mins
Bail is a centuries-old practice that allows defendants in criminal cases to be released from jail until their trial convenes. Learn more about the origins of bail and modern bail practices in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hello,
(00:20):
and this is stuff you should know? Yes right, indeed, So, Chuck,
how are you doing? I'm good and well yourself. That's enough, pansy, Chuck.
You know they've been arrested a couple of times. I
do know that, and I have not, as you know,
and you're very fortunate. It's not a pleasant experience. I'm
sure you get booked, yes, right, the fingerprint you sure?
(00:42):
They make fun of how fat you look. They take
all the things out of your pockets. Yea, and keep
them not whatever. Know, they give them back. They carefully
catalog everything except any hundred dollar bills you have on you.
Do you have a mug shot? I do? And actually
when they took my mug shot, I was smiling and
they thought it was funny, so they blew it out
full size and hung it on the processing center wall. Really, yeah,
(01:05):
now do you actually have that? They don't give you
a copy, that dud I do really. Yeah, I asked
for a copy. You should have to find it somewhere. Yeah,
should see if you're famous enough to get on the
Smoking Gun Yeah, the smoking guy. Yeah, I'm not. You're
not people like who. Yeah, there there is a munk
shot out there. So if anything ever happens to us,
then it'll it'll surface, I'm sure. Yeah. Um, but I'm
(01:25):
here to tell you that you can get out of
jail if your bail is set like five thousand dollars
and all you have is five hundred. Not a bad deal, No,
especially if you have a friend who's willing to come
lend you five dollars to get out. Yeah. Sure, But
how would you do that, Chuck? How what kind of
sense does that make? If you're If you're bail, the
(01:46):
amount that's required to release you from jail until your
court aid uh is five thousand dollars. How can you
get out for five? Well? I would I would think
that that's some sort of security type of deposit kind
of yeah, or the pecurity deposit. Yeah. Maybe are we
talking about bail? We're talking about bond buddy, Okay, Yeah,
(02:06):
I just wanted to officially introduce the Bail Show we're
doing a two parter here, right, Yes, this was brought
to our attention by listener Steve who saw a little
MPR thing on bail, and Josh happened to hear the
same one, right yeah, and found it very interesting. Right. Yeah.
It was a three part um. It was a three
part series on MPR from Laura Sullivan who really got
(02:31):
to the heart of the matter and kind of exposed
a pretty serious racket that's going on here in the
United States that unfairly burdened the poor. Well, we'll get
to that, but we want to cover bail first, and
then part two of the series will be Bounty Hunters.
So when we don't talk about that dog jerk in
this podcast, don't send us an email. Wait two days
(02:52):
and you'll hear all about them. Yeah. Okay, So, like
I said, Chuck, bail is basically um money that you
ex change to the court in return for your freedom
after you're arrested. Right, Yeah, how this all start? Well, frankly,
it started a long time ago, Chuck. It started in
the thirteenth century. Um, I believe the UK. I'd say,
(03:12):
we weren't around back then, No, we weren't. But it
started in the uk Um in the thirteenth century, where
so a surety, A surety is somebody who assures your bond,
your bail, right, um was actually a person rather than money.
Well it used to be a person, is that what
you're saying? Yeah, And they would actually hang in your
(03:33):
place if you skip bail. Yeah, So I mean somebody
really had to love you to stand in as your
your surety, your your bail. I bet that didn't happen
a lot back then. I wouldn't guess. Yeah, I mean
maybe if the person who was arrested was like a
quadruple amputee, then I'm sure you can find somebody who's
(03:53):
a surety. But other than that, I don't know. I
don't know that I would have put myself up right.
And so then habeas corpus comes along, yeah, in the
seventeenth century, right, and that basically established terms for bail,
and then the Bill of Rights in England there shortly
thereafter UH talked about excessive bail and kind of set
some more parameters on what you could do. Right, Yeah,
(04:14):
Habeas corpus remember we did that podcast on that. Indeed
kind of huge, but yeah, that created the idea of
bail for money or money as bail. And then in
the United States we adopted a lot of the the
the English common law that had to do with bail
and jailing and all that, uh, and we came up
with the Judiciary Act of what sev. Nine. Yes, And
(04:36):
what I found most interesting is that that sucker state
in effect and fairly unchanged in nineteen sixty six. Yeah,
it's a long time, it is, but I mean it's
it's pretty basic stuff. It's if you are arrested, uh,
and you're not a threat to the community, you should
be able to post bail because you know, people like
their money and you want your money back. That's the
(04:57):
whole point of the thing. If you you're saying, here,
five thousand dollars, I'll be back from my court date,
because you are going to give me that five thousand
dollars back, right right. Um. So, yeah, it did remain
unchanged until nineteen sixty six, although it was put into
the eighth Amendment that people would be granted bail and
that bail would not be excessive. And that's the same
(05:19):
one that contains the cute little provision about um no
cruel or unusual punishment. So sixty six, it changed some
and then it changed again, and what we ended up
with was, uh, some loopholes were closed that allowed dangerous
people to go free. More limits were imposed on judges,
and they basically made it to wear a non violent
(05:42):
criminals were the ones most apt to get bail, and
if you were a violent criminal, your bail was probably
pretty large or denied. Right. And originally, if you were
accused of a capital crime where you could get the
death penalty, you couldn't have bail. And I'm pretty sure
that still remains in effect. But yeah, and uh, there's
a lot of places, especially huge metropolitan areas like say
(06:05):
Los Angeles, UM, that have bail schedules. There's just so
many people coming in and out of the doors that
they're like, oh, perjury, well then that's a five thousand
dollar bail. They just literally look it up on their chart,
follow their little finger across right until they get to
kidnapped with intent to rape? And and what was that one?
Actually one million dollars? Sure, and it should be pretty high,
(06:28):
I would think so, right, So, Chuck, let's say someone
is caught kidnapping and they have some sort of malicious
intent associated with it, and their bail set at a
million dollars. They have a million dollars? Uh, say they
have an AMEX black card, right, all right, good for them.
They can slap that puppy down and pay what's called
the cash bail. Yes, many places, but that they would
(06:49):
rack up on sky miles a bad criminal who gets
caught a lot with the But they do some places
to accept check, some credit cards or just good old
fashioned green backs. Right. But let's say that you have
a million dollars or you don't. Your your bail is
a million dollars, but you can only come up with
a hundred grand in cash? Right, Yes, who are you
gonna call? Not ghostbusters, a bail bondsman, Josh, or a bailor? Right,
(07:14):
it's another name. Yeah, you remember in Athens they were
like T shirts, bail bond t shirts, and they give
you like a teen percent discount if you wear it.
I can't remember. I mean that lay were literally it
was an institution Athens. I can't. I can't remember that.
I don't either. They have match books in all the bars. Yeah,
they were very famous. Actually, did you ever have one
of those? Did they help you out? Or was that
in Athens? It wasn't an athen that I was arrested.
(07:36):
No more questions, Okay, I'll let you off on this one.
So Chuck, what what when you call bail bondsman? What
you're what? They're gonna put up as a surety bond?
Remember we talked about. A surety is somebody who um
says I will cover this person's bail. Yeah, And that's
basically the bail bondsman. And they are backed by an
insurance company, a very special insurance company. Obviously they don't
(07:58):
have just a regular farm policy. And they are now
on the hook for you appearing in court and they
have to pay that uh you know, huge sum of
money if you don't show, right, So they'll take a
teen percent premium. Sure, well yeah, that's why they do it.
And that's on top of everything else, right, Yeah, And
then they'll put up the money or they'll say, actually
(08:19):
they don't put up the money. They say, I will
put up the money out like you said, I'm on
the hook now, um. But they'll also take some collateral,
maybe like a title to your parents house or the
title of your car, some jewelry or whatever. They will
also Josh, get friends and family involved to help chip
in and uh so that way, if they're kind of
on the line, they think the person will show up
(08:40):
for court. Right, Yeah, you're you're kind of indebted to
your parents for bailing you out and putting their house up,
and you don't want your poor parents to lose their house,
right exactly. Um, you can also do We'll get some
more on that, right yeah, yeah, okay. You can also
do released on on citation, where the cop just basically
it's like the same trap ticket is a released on
(09:01):
citation bail. That's my favorite kind of bail, is it?
My favorite is the kind where they're like, you know what,
I'm not even going to give you this ticket. Go ahead,
just be careful. Yeah exactly, Yeah, that's my favorite. There's
released on recognisance. Yeah, that's when you actually are booked
and arrested, but uh crime is probably not so severe
and definitely not violent, and they'll say, we trust it,
(09:22):
you'll show up, You're not a flight risk, don't worry
about paying anything. And then, uh, we we talked about
how your parents can give their house title is collateral
to a bounty hunter. You can actually do that in sorry, yes,
you can do that in some states with the the
jail directly through a property bond on the spot. Yeah,
the court places a lean in the amount of the
(09:45):
bail against your say your house or your land or whatever. Um.
And if you skip, then they can foreclothes on it
and actually sell it to get their money back. Yeah.
So well they use if you have, like you said,
the five dollars, if your bail was fifty thou, would
you give that five hundred to the bail bondsman? Is
that how that works? Yeah? What they do is, let's
(10:06):
say you're usually they charge ten percent premium, right, so
that's just their feet, right, that's just their feet because
it's a ten percent, it's ten percent usually of the bail.
People assume that, Um, what you're doing is you've just
carved out ten percent and then you know they you
don't owe them anymore. Not true. No, this is tim
(10:27):
percent on top of the bail. So if it's fifty
thou dollars, the ten percent will be five thousand dollars.
And that's just the money they took for saying i'll
i'll cover you. Yeah. It's basically loan interest exactly, very
quick and urgent loan. Yeah. And and that is it's
very it's it's alone. They're loaning you your freedom. Basically, um, chuck.
(10:48):
Dealing with bail bondsman is um the most common way
to get out of jail. Yeah. Uh, you know, people
can't come up with five grand bail, but they can
usually come up with five premium. Sure, that's the the
whole deal. And we'll get into that later about the poor,
but not very many people can afford their bail. Even
if they're rich fat cats. They will often set the bail.
(11:09):
I just saw the record was last October. Did you
see that. The guy's name, he was the head of
the Galleon Group and they were apparently did some insider
trading RAJ Roger ATNHAM and he set the record in
October one million dollar bail. Bernie Madels is only ten million,
if that tells me. So he had twenty mill to
(11:30):
put down as his I guess deposit and the judge
said all right, you can hang out, and the bill
bondsman was like, yes, score, because that's twenty that's pure
profit to pure profit. Um. And when you're dealing with
the bail bondsman, there's some things you want to look for.
I mean, their their business people. Um, they deal with
some of the seedier quarters of society, right, Yeah, but
(11:53):
it's a real business and the documents are very real
as well, and you want to very you at the
very least, you want to be aware of what you're
signing in most cases, and you definitely want to read
it as well. You can't. No, you're kind of stuck
between a rock and a hard place. But you have
to be aware of what you're signing when you sign
the Bill Bond contract because it is an extremely powerful
(12:16):
and pretty much airtight contract. We'll get to exactly all
it entails and in the Bounty Hunter episode. But just
this isn't like, hey, I'll come back for court. That's
not all that that thing says. Now you're signing a
way certain rights and that big one that's the teaser
for Thursday show. Yeah, so um, Chuck. You also want
(12:37):
to make sure that a Bill bondsman that you're dealing with,
um will be responsive to questions from your family, is
easily contact as a cell phone, that kind of thing.
And if you get the impression that your Bill bondsman
is not going to um be there for you, then
you you want to move along and find another one
that you feel more comfortable with in every town is
(12:59):
a lotusy with bail bondsman because every town is allows
well not every town, but many towns are allowsy with crime. Sure,
and then one leads to the other. So Josh. The
other thing you should do if you go to hire
bail bondsman is uh like, if you're hiring any personal contractor,
look at their I d get their make sure they're
registered or license that they have to be. I think
(13:19):
you have to be licensed in every state now, right
if it's legal. Yeah, there are states where it's not legal.
We'll get to that in a second. Okay, So check
out their credits. UM, ask for detailed explanations of UM
any kind of fees in addition to the ten percent.
You don't want to get a bill at the end
that says, well you had to pay for this, this
and this as well, right, So just make sure it's
(13:40):
on the level. And like you said, make sure that
they communicate with you regularly. UM. And if you if
you aren't comfortable with who you're who you're talking to,
ye again, just move along unless there's a you're in
a state one of four states in the Union that
just do not allow commerce for bail bond market whatsoever.
(14:02):
And where's that there? Uh, Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, and Kentucky
all have laws on the books that outlaw commercial bail bonding. Um,
Wisconsin doesn't in a roundabout way, which says that no surety,
remember the person that gets you out, uh can be
compensated for being a surety. And well that's how they
make their money in the bail bond market. So there's that. UM.
(14:23):
And then say, like Kentucky expressly outlaws of bail bond industry. Yeah,
so in those states you have to put up your
own money or a property bond or something like that,
or I imagine they probably have higher rates of being
released on your own recognizance. Yeah, maybe maybe not, or
maybe you're just s o L. If you're in Kentucky.
(14:43):
Well if you're UM, poor, chuck your s O L.
In the United States, we were talking about the MPR
report by Laura Sullivan. Yeah, I gotta say, I think
everybody should go read this. It really it really exposed
a round packet in the US between UM, the criminal
(15:03):
court system and Bill Bondsman. Yeah, they used UM. Broward County,
Florida is a really great example because they had a
situation down there where they were kind of a situation
that's all over the country. Jails are full, uh, tax
stay dollars are like people are paying tons of money
to keep these people. Nine billion a year in the US.
A hundred and fifteen dollars a day is what it
(15:25):
cost to jail someone, at least in Broward County. Yeah,
per inmate. That's like a you know, not the worst
hotel in the world. Now. And there are alternatives, specifically
pre trial programs, yes, and that is when they release
people with UM sometimes as GPS or ankle monitoring systems. Uh.
Sometimes you just have to call in or text when
(15:47):
their home and stay within a certain radius of their home.
And it was a huge, huge success, right, and then
it dried up. All funding for it dried up except
for just the tiniest amount. Why because as of bribes,
well not bribes, we should c o a here, because
bail bondsman rallied together and UM hired a lobbyists and
(16:09):
they wrote a bunch of checks to the Bard County commissioners. Yeah,
the commissioners and the mayor as well, right, and actually
chuck the uh, the mayor of the Commissioners, the head
of the Board of Commissioners UH. Four days before this
vote on pre trial funding, UM got fifteen checks totaling
five grand from local bail bondsman for his campaign. Yeah,
(16:35):
and pre trial it was it was it cost about
two dollars a day, where you said that keeping someone
in jail cost a hundred and fifteen a day. Yeah,
they were able to shut down a twenty million dollar
wing of their jail. It was that popular and successful
the program. But the problem is because it was popular
and successful, there were people who normally would have gone
to a bail bondsman UH to get out of jail,
(16:57):
who were just getting out through the pre trial pre
trial programs. So, like you said, they got a lobbyist
who's actually also a lobbyist for the boarder commissioners and
got the whole thing shut down basically like a few
people who are still in the program. UM. But it's
not nearly what it used to be, even though it
was a success. So there's one way that bail bondsman
(17:17):
I mean manipulating the system. UM. And another part of
that MPR report, people in Lubbock, Texas were profiled and
these people like they're they're bail. Their bond would have
been like seventy five bucks because they had like seven
fifty dollar bail. But these are very, very poor people
(17:38):
that can't come up with seventy five bucks. They don't
have anybody to borrow it from, so they're rotting in
jail for months. One guy stole forty dollars worth of
blankets because he was cold in the station wagon one night. Um,
and he's been in jail for four months to thousands
and thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars. And the reason
is is these bills bail bondsmen are saying, this is
(17:58):
a cutthroat industry and we can't afford to let anybody
who would potentially be a customer slip through. So that
means that people who can't afford to be a customer
don't have the option of pre trial because it was
shut down. Um, so they get to stay in jail
at the taxpayer expense, to benefit only the bail bond industry.
(18:21):
And you know, I'm all for capitalism and someone earning
a buck, I'm not anti bail bondsman, not at the
expense of someone's freedom. Well, and the fact that it's
if you're talking about the bail bondsman, maybe a few
of them shutting down or costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.
It's just there's it's a no brainer. No, it isn't.
But again, powerful lobby as as uh Laura Anderson points
(18:44):
out the you know, most indigent inmates don't have a lobby. Well, yeah,
and I think she said fifty of people in jail
are the only reason they're in jails because they can't
afford bail. Yeah, that's at least in Brower County. So
billions of dollars in taxpayer money, months and months of
freedom for inmates, um or incarceration for inmates, and the
(19:04):
bail bond industry is thriving. Right, there is another way
that they are thriving. Actually, chuck um, they don't pay
up when people run. Wh Yeah, what do you mean?
So as part of a kind of a punishment in
most states, if you're a bail bondsman and you're somebody
skips um, you're supposed to automatically pay that, say, five
(19:29):
thousand dollars. They don't intesta no, so they keep the
premium a ten percent premium, and then sometimes they well,
in most cases they negotiate um with the county. Yeah,
about five percent of the actual bail is what they
end up paying. So that means that they got a
(19:50):
ten percent premium. All right, they made five percent of
that for doing nothing. That's it. They don't have to
pay out any money. They're insured anyway, though, So even
when they do have to pay out, they're not really
paying out right. I'm sure they're insurance premiums are sky high,
but I'm sure we're gonna hear from a bail bondsman.
I would like to actually, well, Chuck, let's let's go
(20:10):
on to the next episode two days from now. Well,
I have a quick question because my favorite all time
movie comedy is Midnight Run Really oh yeah, Robert de
Niro and Charles Gardens and is probably the best bounty
hunter movie ever made. In that movie, the bounty hunter
Joey Pants hired I'm sorry, the bail bondsman hired two
(20:31):
bounty hunters to cover the same case. And that's where
a lot of the comedy comes from. The great John
Ashton opposite de Niro. Is that true? Can that happen? Uh?
It depends? Yeah, really, sure you can have freelance bounty
hunters running your cases. Well, I thought it said in
the article that they try to keep ethical boundaries set
(20:52):
because it's no good. All right, but you can, okay,
depending cost a lot of problems in the movie. Have
you ever seen Dead Man? Oh? Yeah, caused a lot
of problems in that movie too. Yeah, a good point. Yeah,
specifically one smushed head. Yes, God, I love that movie.
Do you know? It took me probably five or six
times of seeing it before I realized it's actually a
dark comedy. Uh, there's some funny parts, for sure. No,
(21:15):
watch it like that. Like the whole thing is a
dark comedy from beginning to end. It's a great soundtrack too,
by the way. Yeah, I have that the great Neil Young.
I'm not a big Neil Young fan, but I even
like that so well because he didn't sing. So here
we go. Yeah, okay, well Chuck, that's it for bail
right now? All right? Yeah, I'm it'll come up here
there when we talk about bounty hunters in two days.
(21:36):
But in the meantime, what is it time for listener mail?
It is Josh, Josh, I'm gonna call this blood transfusion
from Jehovah's witness. Oh yeah, actually it's not from a
Jehovah's witness, but it's a good story. This is from Mito,
and Mito is Portuguese. Yes, it's from Portugal. Cool. Hello, guys,
(21:56):
I heard your podcast about organ donation and you mentioned
Jehovah's witnesses not being big on blood transfusion. Have a
little scoop on that. My father was a doctor in
Brazil and many years ago he came home all shaken
up when he told us a story. He revealed that
he came upon an accident where a small kid came
into his operating room. Man just stabilized a kid and
(22:18):
all he needed was a blood transfusion and he would
go home in a few days. And I know you
know where this is headed. The kid's family was Jehovah's witness.
They argued with the father um for hours and basically said,
very clearly, we would rather him die than get a
blood transfusion. So, like any good doctor, the or I
(22:38):
don't know if that's true or not, but like this
doctor did, he basically went against their wishes and gave
the kid a transfusion without the parents knowing it. Exactly.
The parents got really mad and we're ready to take
his medical license, but the kid awoke by that time, smiling.
Seeing this, the parents started crying, thanked my father for
saving his life. More than ten years later, they still
(23:01):
received Christmas gifts my dad does from them every year,
so they're like, oh, hey, this is kind of nice.
Actually my son lives. Well, you remember the Jehovah's witnesses
believed that the blood becomes impure once it leaves the body. Yeah,
it seemed to How about this guy, Yeah, it seems
seemed to impure to me. So he attached a picture
of his father and says, uh, there's one of many
(23:24):
stories that turned my father into a hero while I
was a boy. He saves life for a living, lives
for a living. Doesn't that make a hero? Definitely? And
I say absolutely. And he emailed back and he said
his dad also gave a big pen tricky out of
me one time. Awesome. So this dude is on the scene.
I told you about a friend of mine whose mom
got an emergency tricky out of me with a steak
(23:44):
knife and a straw. Yeah. Yeah, So kudos to you, Mito,
and to your father. And he also sent a picture
of his little nephew, Lucas we just welcomed into the
world and whom his father delivered. So he does a
little bit everything. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty good
guy and a hero indeed. Well, if you have a
great hero story, Chuck and I want to hear it right, Yes,
(24:07):
you still make it up? Please don't. You can put
it in an email and send it to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
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(24:31):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Hello,
(00:20):
and this is stuff you should know? Yes right, indeed, So, Chuck,
how are you doing? I'm good and well yourself. That's enough, pansy, Chuck.
You know they've been arrested a couple of times. I
do know that, and I have not, as you know,
and you're very fortunate. It's not a pleasant experience. I'm
sure you get booked, yes, right, the fingerprint you sure?
(00:42):
They make fun of how fat you look. They take
all the things out of your pockets. Yea, and keep
them not whatever. Know, they give them back. They carefully
catalog everything except any hundred dollar bills you have on you.
Do you have a mug shot? I do? And actually
when they took my mug shot, I was smiling and
they thought it was funny, so they blew it out
full size and hung it on the processing center wall. Really, yeah,
(01:05):
now do you actually have that? They don't give you
a copy, that dud I do really. Yeah, I asked
for a copy. You should have to find it somewhere. Yeah,
should see if you're famous enough to get on the
Smoking Gun Yeah, the smoking guy. Yeah, I'm not. You're
not people like who. Yeah, there there is a munk
shot out there. So if anything ever happens to us,
then it'll it'll surface, I'm sure. Yeah. Um, but I'm
(01:25):
here to tell you that you can get out of
jail if your bail is set like five thousand dollars
and all you have is five hundred. Not a bad deal, No,
especially if you have a friend who's willing to come
lend you five dollars to get out. Yeah. Sure, But
how would you do that, Chuck? How what kind of
sense does that make? If you're If you're bail, the
(01:46):
amount that's required to release you from jail until your
court aid uh is five thousand dollars. How can you
get out for five? Well? I would I would think
that that's some sort of security type of deposit kind
of yeah, or the pecurity deposit. Yeah. Maybe are we
talking about bail? We're talking about bond buddy, Okay, Yeah,
(02:06):
I just wanted to officially introduce the Bail Show we're
doing a two parter here, right, Yes, this was brought
to our attention by listener Steve who saw a little
MPR thing on bail, and Josh happened to hear the
same one, right yeah, and found it very interesting. Right. Yeah.
It was a three part um. It was a three
part series on MPR from Laura Sullivan who really got
(02:31):
to the heart of the matter and kind of exposed
a pretty serious racket that's going on here in the
United States that unfairly burdened the poor. Well, we'll get
to that, but we want to cover bail first, and
then part two of the series will be Bounty Hunters.
So when we don't talk about that dog jerk in
this podcast, don't send us an email. Wait two days
(02:52):
and you'll hear all about them. Yeah. Okay, So, like
I said, Chuck, bail is basically um money that you
ex change to the court in return for your freedom
after you're arrested. Right, Yeah, how this all start? Well, frankly,
it started a long time ago, Chuck. It started in
the thirteenth century. Um, I believe the UK. I'd say,
(03:12):
we weren't around back then, No, we weren't. But it
started in the uk Um in the thirteenth century, where
so a surety, A surety is somebody who assures your bond,
your bail, right, um was actually a person rather than money.
Well it used to be a person, is that what
you're saying? Yeah, And they would actually hang in your
(03:33):
place if you skip bail. Yeah, So I mean somebody
really had to love you to stand in as your
your surety, your your bail. I bet that didn't happen
a lot back then. I wouldn't guess. Yeah, I mean
maybe if the person who was arrested was like a
quadruple amputee, then I'm sure you can find somebody who's
(03:53):
a surety. But other than that, I don't know. I
don't know that I would have put myself up right.
And so then habeas corpus comes along, yeah, in the
seventeenth century, right, and that basically established terms for bail,
and then the Bill of Rights in England there shortly
thereafter UH talked about excessive bail and kind of set
some more parameters on what you could do. Right, Yeah,
(04:14):
Habeas corpus remember we did that podcast on that. Indeed
kind of huge, but yeah, that created the idea of
bail for money or money as bail. And then in
the United States we adopted a lot of the the
the English common law that had to do with bail
and jailing and all that, uh, and we came up
with the Judiciary Act of what sev. Nine. Yes, And
(04:36):
what I found most interesting is that that sucker state
in effect and fairly unchanged in nineteen sixty six. Yeah,
it's a long time, it is, but I mean it's
it's pretty basic stuff. It's if you are arrested, uh,
and you're not a threat to the community, you should
be able to post bail because you know, people like
their money and you want your money back. That's the
(04:57):
whole point of the thing. If you you're saying, here,
five thousand dollars, I'll be back from my court date,
because you are going to give me that five thousand
dollars back, right right. Um. So, yeah, it did remain
unchanged until nineteen sixty six, although it was put into
the eighth Amendment that people would be granted bail and
that bail would not be excessive. And that's the same
(05:19):
one that contains the cute little provision about um no
cruel or unusual punishment. So sixty six, it changed some
and then it changed again, and what we ended up
with was, uh, some loopholes were closed that allowed dangerous
people to go free. More limits were imposed on judges,
and they basically made it to wear a non violent
(05:42):
criminals were the ones most apt to get bail, and
if you were a violent criminal, your bail was probably
pretty large or denied. Right. And originally, if you were
accused of a capital crime where you could get the
death penalty, you couldn't have bail. And I'm pretty sure
that still remains in effect. But yeah, and uh, there's
a lot of places, especially huge metropolitan areas like say
(06:05):
Los Angeles, UM, that have bail schedules. There's just so
many people coming in and out of the doors that
they're like, oh, perjury, well then that's a five thousand
dollar bail. They just literally look it up on their chart,
follow their little finger across right until they get to
kidnapped with intent to rape? And and what was that one?
Actually one million dollars? Sure, and it should be pretty high,
(06:28):
I would think so, right, So, Chuck, let's say someone
is caught kidnapping and they have some sort of malicious
intent associated with it, and their bail set at a
million dollars. They have a million dollars? Uh, say they
have an AMEX black card, right, all right, good for them.
They can slap that puppy down and pay what's called
the cash bail. Yes, many places, but that they would
(06:49):
rack up on sky miles a bad criminal who gets
caught a lot with the But they do some places
to accept check, some credit cards or just good old
fashioned green backs. Right. But let's say that you have
a million dollars or you don't. Your your bail is
a million dollars, but you can only come up with
a hundred grand in cash? Right, Yes, who are you
gonna call? Not ghostbusters, a bail bondsman, Josh, or a bailor? Right,
(07:14):
it's another name. Yeah, you remember in Athens they were
like T shirts, bail bond t shirts, and they give
you like a teen percent discount if you wear it.
I can't remember. I mean that lay were literally it
was an institution Athens. I can't. I can't remember that.
I don't either. They have match books in all the bars. Yeah,
they were very famous. Actually, did you ever have one
of those? Did they help you out? Or was that
in Athens? It wasn't an athen that I was arrested.
(07:36):
No more questions, Okay, I'll let you off on this one.
So Chuck, what what when you call bail bondsman? What
you're what? They're gonna put up as a surety bond?
Remember we talked about. A surety is somebody who um
says I will cover this person's bail. Yeah, And that's
basically the bail bondsman. And they are backed by an
insurance company, a very special insurance company. Obviously they don't
(07:58):
have just a regular farm policy. And they are now
on the hook for you appearing in court and they
have to pay that uh you know, huge sum of
money if you don't show, right, So they'll take a
teen percent premium. Sure, well yeah, that's why they do it.
And that's on top of everything else, right, Yeah, And
then they'll put up the money or they'll say, actually
(08:19):
they don't put up the money. They say, I will
put up the money out like you said, I'm on
the hook now, um. But they'll also take some collateral,
maybe like a title to your parents house or the
title of your car, some jewelry or whatever. They will
also Josh, get friends and family involved to help chip
in and uh so that way, if they're kind of
on the line, they think the person will show up
(08:40):
for court. Right, Yeah, you're you're kind of indebted to
your parents for bailing you out and putting their house up,
and you don't want your poor parents to lose their house,
right exactly. Um, you can also do We'll get some
more on that, right yeah, yeah, okay. You can also
do released on on citation, where the cop just basically
it's like the same trap ticket is a released on
(09:01):
citation bail. That's my favorite kind of bail, is it?
My favorite is the kind where they're like, you know what,
I'm not even going to give you this ticket. Go ahead,
just be careful. Yeah exactly, Yeah, that's my favorite. There's
released on recognisance. Yeah, that's when you actually are booked
and arrested, but uh crime is probably not so severe
and definitely not violent, and they'll say, we trust it,
(09:22):
you'll show up, You're not a flight risk, don't worry
about paying anything. And then, uh, we we talked about
how your parents can give their house title is collateral
to a bounty hunter. You can actually do that in sorry, yes,
you can do that in some states with the the
jail directly through a property bond on the spot. Yeah,
the court places a lean in the amount of the
(09:45):
bail against your say your house or your land or whatever. Um.
And if you skip, then they can foreclothes on it
and actually sell it to get their money back. Yeah.
So well they use if you have, like you said,
the five dollars, if your bail was fifty thou, would
you give that five hundred to the bail bondsman? Is
that how that works? Yeah? What they do is, let's
(10:06):
say you're usually they charge ten percent premium, right, so
that's just their feet, right, that's just their feet because
it's a ten percent, it's ten percent usually of the bail.
People assume that, Um, what you're doing is you've just
carved out ten percent and then you know they you
don't owe them anymore. Not true. No, this is tim
(10:27):
percent on top of the bail. So if it's fifty
thou dollars, the ten percent will be five thousand dollars.
And that's just the money they took for saying i'll
i'll cover you. Yeah. It's basically loan interest exactly, very
quick and urgent loan. Yeah. And and that is it's
very it's it's alone. They're loaning you your freedom. Basically, um, chuck.
(10:48):
Dealing with bail bondsman is um the most common way
to get out of jail. Yeah. Uh, you know, people
can't come up with five grand bail, but they can
usually come up with five premium. Sure, that's the the
whole deal. And we'll get into that later about the poor,
but not very many people can afford their bail. Even
if they're rich fat cats. They will often set the bail.
(11:09):
I just saw the record was last October. Did you
see that. The guy's name, he was the head of
the Galleon Group and they were apparently did some insider
trading RAJ Roger ATNHAM and he set the record in
October one million dollar bail. Bernie Madels is only ten million,
if that tells me. So he had twenty mill to
(11:30):
put down as his I guess deposit and the judge
said all right, you can hang out, and the bill
bondsman was like, yes, score, because that's twenty that's pure
profit to pure profit. Um. And when you're dealing with
the bail bondsman, there's some things you want to look for.
I mean, their their business people. Um, they deal with
some of the seedier quarters of society, right, Yeah, but
(11:53):
it's a real business and the documents are very real
as well, and you want to very you at the
very least, you want to be aware of what you're
signing in most cases, and you definitely want to read
it as well. You can't. No, you're kind of stuck
between a rock and a hard place. But you have
to be aware of what you're signing when you sign
the Bill Bond contract because it is an extremely powerful
(12:16):
and pretty much airtight contract. We'll get to exactly all
it entails and in the Bounty Hunter episode. But just
this isn't like, hey, I'll come back for court. That's
not all that that thing says. Now you're signing a
way certain rights and that big one that's the teaser
for Thursday show. Yeah, so um, Chuck. You also want
(12:37):
to make sure that a Bill bondsman that you're dealing with,
um will be responsive to questions from your family, is
easily contact as a cell phone, that kind of thing.
And if you get the impression that your Bill bondsman
is not going to um be there for you, then
you you want to move along and find another one
that you feel more comfortable with in every town is
(12:59):
a lotusy with bail bondsman because every town is allows
well not every town, but many towns are allowsy with crime. Sure,
and then one leads to the other. So Josh. The
other thing you should do if you go to hire
bail bondsman is uh like, if you're hiring any personal contractor,
look at their I d get their make sure they're
registered or license that they have to be. I think
(13:19):
you have to be licensed in every state now, right
if it's legal. Yeah, there are states where it's not legal.
We'll get to that in a second. Okay, So check
out their credits. UM, ask for detailed explanations of UM
any kind of fees in addition to the ten percent.
You don't want to get a bill at the end
that says, well you had to pay for this, this
and this as well, right, So just make sure it's
(13:40):
on the level. And like you said, make sure that
they communicate with you regularly. UM. And if you if
you aren't comfortable with who you're who you're talking to,
ye again, just move along unless there's a you're in
a state one of four states in the Union that
just do not allow commerce for bail bond market whatsoever.
(14:02):
And where's that there? Uh, Wisconsin, Oregon, Illinois, and Kentucky
all have laws on the books that outlaw commercial bail bonding. Um,
Wisconsin doesn't in a roundabout way, which says that no surety,
remember the person that gets you out, uh can be
compensated for being a surety. And well that's how they
make their money in the bail bond market. So there's that. UM.
(14:23):
And then say, like Kentucky expressly outlaws of bail bond industry. Yeah,
so in those states you have to put up your
own money or a property bond or something like that,
or I imagine they probably have higher rates of being
released on your own recognizance. Yeah, maybe maybe not, or
maybe you're just s o L. If you're in Kentucky.
(14:43):
Well if you're UM, poor, chuck your s O L.
In the United States, we were talking about the MPR
report by Laura Sullivan. Yeah, I gotta say, I think
everybody should go read this. It really it really exposed
a round packet in the US between UM, the criminal
(15:03):
court system and Bill Bondsman. Yeah, they used UM. Broward County,
Florida is a really great example because they had a
situation down there where they were kind of a situation
that's all over the country. Jails are full, uh, tax
stay dollars are like people are paying tons of money
to keep these people. Nine billion a year in the US.
A hundred and fifteen dollars a day is what it
(15:25):
cost to jail someone, at least in Broward County. Yeah,
per inmate. That's like a you know, not the worst
hotel in the world. Now. And there are alternatives, specifically
pre trial programs, yes, and that is when they release
people with UM sometimes as GPS or ankle monitoring systems. Uh.
Sometimes you just have to call in or text when
(15:47):
their home and stay within a certain radius of their home.
And it was a huge, huge success, right, and then
it dried up. All funding for it dried up except
for just the tiniest amount. Why because as of bribes,
well not bribes, we should c o a here, because
bail bondsman rallied together and UM hired a lobbyists and
(16:09):
they wrote a bunch of checks to the Bard County commissioners. Yeah,
the commissioners and the mayor as well, right, and actually
chuck the uh, the mayor of the Commissioners, the head
of the Board of Commissioners UH. Four days before this
vote on pre trial funding, UM got fifteen checks totaling
five grand from local bail bondsman for his campaign. Yeah,
(16:35):
and pre trial it was it was it cost about
two dollars a day, where you said that keeping someone
in jail cost a hundred and fifteen a day. Yeah,
they were able to shut down a twenty million dollar
wing of their jail. It was that popular and successful
the program. But the problem is because it was popular
and successful, there were people who normally would have gone
to a bail bondsman UH to get out of jail,
(16:57):
who were just getting out through the pre trial pre
trial programs. So, like you said, they got a lobbyist
who's actually also a lobbyist for the boarder commissioners and
got the whole thing shut down basically like a few
people who are still in the program. UM. But it's
not nearly what it used to be, even though it
was a success. So there's one way that bail bondsman
(17:17):
I mean manipulating the system. UM. And another part of
that MPR report, people in Lubbock, Texas were profiled and
these people like they're they're bail. Their bond would have
been like seventy five bucks because they had like seven
fifty dollar bail. But these are very, very poor people
(17:38):
that can't come up with seventy five bucks. They don't
have anybody to borrow it from, so they're rotting in
jail for months. One guy stole forty dollars worth of
blankets because he was cold in the station wagon one night. Um,
and he's been in jail for four months to thousands
and thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars. And the reason
is is these bills bail bondsmen are saying, this is
(17:58):
a cutthroat industry and we can't afford to let anybody
who would potentially be a customer slip through. So that
means that people who can't afford to be a customer
don't have the option of pre trial because it was
shut down. Um, so they get to stay in jail
at the taxpayer expense, to benefit only the bail bond industry.
(18:21):
And you know, I'm all for capitalism and someone earning
a buck, I'm not anti bail bondsman, not at the
expense of someone's freedom. Well, and the fact that it's
if you're talking about the bail bondsman, maybe a few
of them shutting down or costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.
It's just there's it's a no brainer. No, it isn't.
But again, powerful lobby as as uh Laura Anderson points
(18:44):
out the you know, most indigent inmates don't have a lobby. Well, yeah,
and I think she said fifty of people in jail
are the only reason they're in jails because they can't
afford bail. Yeah, that's at least in Brower County. So
billions of dollars in taxpayer money, months and months of
freedom for inmates, um or incarceration for inmates, and the
(19:04):
bail bond industry is thriving. Right, there is another way
that they are thriving. Actually, chuck um, they don't pay
up when people run. Wh Yeah, what do you mean?
So as part of a kind of a punishment in
most states, if you're a bail bondsman and you're somebody
skips um, you're supposed to automatically pay that, say, five
(19:29):
thousand dollars. They don't intesta no, so they keep the
premium a ten percent premium, and then sometimes they well,
in most cases they negotiate um with the county. Yeah,
about five percent of the actual bail is what they
end up paying. So that means that they got a
(19:50):
ten percent premium. All right, they made five percent of
that for doing nothing. That's it. They don't have to
pay out any money. They're insured anyway, though, So even
when they do have to pay out, they're not really
paying out right. I'm sure they're insurance premiums are sky high,
but I'm sure we're gonna hear from a bail bondsman.
I would like to actually, well, Chuck, let's let's go
(20:10):
on to the next episode two days from now. Well,
I have a quick question because my favorite all time
movie comedy is Midnight Run Really oh yeah, Robert de
Niro and Charles Gardens and is probably the best bounty
hunter movie ever made. In that movie, the bounty hunter
Joey Pants hired I'm sorry, the bail bondsman hired two
(20:31):
bounty hunters to cover the same case. And that's where
a lot of the comedy comes from. The great John
Ashton opposite de Niro. Is that true? Can that happen? Uh?
It depends? Yeah, really, sure you can have freelance bounty
hunters running your cases. Well, I thought it said in
the article that they try to keep ethical boundaries set
(20:52):
because it's no good. All right, but you can, okay,
depending cost a lot of problems in the movie. Have
you ever seen Dead Man? Oh? Yeah, caused a lot
of problems in that movie too. Yeah, a good point. Yeah,
specifically one smushed head. Yes, God, I love that movie.
Do you know? It took me probably five or six
times of seeing it before I realized it's actually a
dark comedy. Uh, there's some funny parts, for sure. No,
(21:15):
watch it like that. Like the whole thing is a
dark comedy from beginning to end. It's a great soundtrack too,
by the way. Yeah, I have that the great Neil Young.
I'm not a big Neil Young fan, but I even
like that so well because he didn't sing. So here
we go. Yeah, okay, well Chuck, that's it for bail
right now? All right? Yeah, I'm it'll come up here
there when we talk about bounty hunters in two days.
(21:36):
But in the meantime, what is it time for listener mail?
It is Josh, Josh, I'm gonna call this blood transfusion
from Jehovah's witness. Oh yeah, actually it's not from a
Jehovah's witness, but it's a good story. This is from Mito,
and Mito is Portuguese. Yes, it's from Portugal. Cool. Hello, guys,
(21:56):
I heard your podcast about organ donation and you mentioned
Jehovah's witnesses not being big on blood transfusion. Have a
little scoop on that. My father was a doctor in
Brazil and many years ago he came home all shaken
up when he told us a story. He revealed that
he came upon an accident where a small kid came
into his operating room. Man just stabilized a kid and
(22:18):
all he needed was a blood transfusion and he would
go home in a few days. And I know you
know where this is headed. The kid's family was Jehovah's witness.
They argued with the father um for hours and basically said,
very clearly, we would rather him die than get a
blood transfusion. So, like any good doctor, the or I
(22:38):
don't know if that's true or not, but like this
doctor did, he basically went against their wishes and gave
the kid a transfusion without the parents knowing it. Exactly.
The parents got really mad and we're ready to take
his medical license, but the kid awoke by that time, smiling.
Seeing this, the parents started crying, thanked my father for
saving his life. More than ten years later, they still
(23:01):
received Christmas gifts my dad does from them every year,
so they're like, oh, hey, this is kind of nice.
Actually my son lives. Well, you remember the Jehovah's witnesses
believed that the blood becomes impure once it leaves the body. Yeah,
it seemed to How about this guy, Yeah, it seems
seemed to impure to me. So he attached a picture
of his father and says, uh, there's one of many
(23:24):
stories that turned my father into a hero while I
was a boy. He saves life for a living, lives
for a living. Doesn't that make a hero? Definitely? And
I say absolutely. And he emailed back and he said
his dad also gave a big pen tricky out of
me one time. Awesome. So this dude is on the scene.
I told you about a friend of mine whose mom
got an emergency tricky out of me with a steak
(23:44):
knife and a straw. Yeah. Yeah, So kudos to you, Mito,
and to your father. And he also sent a picture
of his little nephew, Lucas we just welcomed into the
world and whom his father delivered. So he does a
little bit everything. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty good
guy and a hero indeed. Well, if you have a
great hero story, Chuck and I want to hear it right, Yes,
(24:07):
you still make it up? Please don't. You can put
it in an email and send it to stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
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