Point taken. Well said.
What happens if he is found innocent? Will he be reimbursed for the private security expenses? Seems like he should be if the courts declare him innocent.
I suspect not. He’ll get his bail back, but not the other expenses. That’s my WAG anyway. The logic would be that he could have avoided the expenses by agreeing to remain in the custody if the state.
No. The primary purpose of bail agreements is to insure a person who is being released from official custody does not flee to avoid the criminal case pending against them. This means that unlike many other things in our legal system it is not “blind” to the status of an individual’s financial affairs. In America if I’m Bill Gates my fine for speeding is going to be the same as anyone else. However, my bail is going to be dramatically different. A middle class person, $100,000 bail will mean they probably lose their house (which they would have put up as collateral) and doomed their families to poverty if they skip out–a very strong motivator to return. Someone like Dominique Strauss-Kahn whose reported worth is around $4m and whose wife’s worth is many multiples of that could lose that kind of money and be perfectly fine with it.
Additionally the conditions of my bail will be very different from Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s, I am not a jet setter with connections all over the world, I am not a citizen of another country, my risk and capacity to flee are simply far lower. So the court can decide on various conditions of bail that must be followed to adjust for those extra risks in DSK’s personal circumstances. Bail remains an option and not mandatory, if DSK had said the conditions of the bail were too onerous for him, he has the option of remaining at Rikers at the expense of the people of New York.
Should DSK be refunded the costs of his super-expensive legal counsel as well, if acquitted? Should he additionally be compensated for lost earnings? Should he be able to sue the State of New York for punitive damages due to the harm it has caused his political career?
He could certainly try to sue the State for all those things, but he would lose since the State is following all the rules in prosecuting a criminal case. He has been indicted by a grand jury and was arrested based on probable cause, so his ability to recover anything he expends in defending himself from the charges is essentially none.
what hasn’t been mentioned is that when I was in Cleveland, “bondees” (don’t know what else to call them) can remove the ankle monitors, and also some cases where no one was paying attention to violations, so it seems they were useless as far as restricting movements
I remember walking past the “French White House” as we sarcastically called the red brick building he was holed up in at the time (since some reports said he might have been the next French president). The whole opposite side of the street was tent awnings filled with TV cameras and paparazzi. I suppose that’s the opposite side of his 15 minutes of international fame, if he tried to go anywhere, he’d be followed like he was Princess Diana.
Also, is it France that refuses to extradite French citizens to other countries? (thinking Polanski…)
This is an old thread!
There was the case of Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of Nissan, who fled house arrest in Japan back to his native Lebanon which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan.
He fled in a large box used for carrying musical instruments and was taken out of Japan by private jet. The father and son who helped him escape were extradited from the US to Japan and served time in prison for their role.