So, as I watched robert blake plead…chortle…innocent yesterday for the murder of his wife, and heard that his body guard’s bail was set at $1,000,000, I was moved to ask…where does all that money go?
I understand that to post bail you don’t actually have to pay $1,000,000 right? Only 100,000 or something. But what happens to that money? Does it go to pay for the courts? The prison system? Does it buy lunch for the jury?
A google search reveals what fines and forfeitures and such go to, but I’m not seeing what they use $1,000,000 bail for.
Bail is just to back up a promise you will show up for trial. If you post your own bail you get it back when you show up. If you don’t show it’s forfieted. I don’t know what happens to it then. If you use a bail bondsman, they usually charge about 20% of the bail. If you don’t show for that he loses it. That’s why they use bounty hunters.
As far as the Court is concerned, you do have to pay the whole amount, but defendants typically make a deal with a bail bondsman. You pay him a %, as Reeder mentioned, and then he fronts the entire fee to the Court. If you skip, he loses the whole deal. (Similarly, if you self-finance, you lose the whole deal if you skip.)
If you show up for trial as you’ve promised, you get the money back. If it’s yours, it goes back in your bank account. If it’s a bondsman’s it goes back to him. Perhaps he’ll also refund part of your fee which was held as security, but maybe not.
If you do skip, I would imagine the money goes into the Court to pay expenses, but I don’t know for sure.
As far as the court is concerned, you have to post the full amount of bail ($1,000,000 in this case) or stay in jail until the trial. The money is held by the court as a bond to insure that you will show up for trial. If you show up for the trial, you get your money back whatever the verdict. If you don’t show up, the court takes the money and you don’t get it back even if you later surrender or are arrested. I’m not sure exactly what happens to the money, I would suspect that it depends on local law and that it probably goes into the court’s budget.
The 10% deal is for bail bondsmen. If you go to a bail bondsman (there will generally be several of them pretty near to a courthouse), he will give the court (post) the full amount of your bail in exchange for a fee which is usually 10% of the total amount. If you show up for the trial, he gets the money back and you don’t get your fee back (depending on exactly the deal, I imagine it varies but that’s the most common one AFAIK). If you don’t show up for trial, it gets interesting. He doesn’t get his money back, but legally he can now go out and arrest you, possibly kicking in doors and shooting at you if you try to flee - exactly what he can do depends on the jurisdiction, but with regards to you and anyone shielding you he generally gets something like police powers without all of the restrictions (the exact mechanics in a given state depend on state law, and I’m not sure how all of the interstate stuff works - a bondsman can definately pursue you across state lines). If he arrests you and brings you back to court, he gets the bail money back and you stay in jail.
Cliffy got it right on the money. I used a bailbondsman (I’ll spare you the details) and I had to pay $500 of my $5000 bail. He fronted the remainder and then kept the $5000 refund after my hearing. I had to write a check to pay for the $75 court cost (or close to that amount) charged because the bail bondsman wasn’t paying for it, or giving me any portion of my $$ back to me. If I hadn’t used him, they would have deducted my court cost from the refund, and given me $4925 back.
Cool. So, basically, you’re going into the bondsman’s “custody,” and if you flee temporarily, he can do whatever he needs to to get you back into his custody–just as if you were in police custody and escaped from jail.
I understood the OP to mean something else entirely: If the defendant does not show up for the trial, and the gummint keeps the money, what is that money used for? I’d imagine it makes a nice dent in the yearly budget, and taxes would go up if more evildoers would show up for court.
With all the people being brought to trial, there must be a lot of cash sitting in the coffers of the police across the country. I wonder if they can invest a portion of it to gain some cash.
In a big city, the influx of new bonds would cover the risk of losing money on the investments.
Yes, that’s how we all understood the OP too, but we don’t know the answer to that question so we answered one we did know.
[quote] Originally posted by phreesh With all the people being brought to trial, there must be a lot of cash sitting in the coffers of the police across the country. I wonder if they can invest a portion of it to gain some cash.
It’s not the police who hold bail money; it’s the courts. As to investing, my WAG is that it has to be held in escrow, meaning it has to be totally safe from risk, so it’d probably be illegal to use it for investment purposes.
Wait a second, everytime I heard of Bail or had bail set for me, I was always under the impression, and actually did just have to pay bond, which is 10%, so if the bail is set at 1,000,000, you pay 100,000 to walk out and to ensure that you show up for court. Is everyone saying that someone puts up the other 90%. For instance, I had a 1,000 bail, I paid 100, walked out and got it back when I showed for court. Never heard of anyone putting up the other 900. If I hadn’t showed would I have had a Bounty Hunter like Deniro from Midnight Run on my ass?
Here in Virginia (or at least in the localities for which I’ve worked), forfeited bond funds go toward court administration costs. It is accounted for in Fines and Forfeitures in municipal budgets.
“Totally safe from risk”? Boy, that’s a pretty high bar. Couldn’t bail money at least be invested in short-term U.S. Treasury securities?
If someone has put up a million dollar bail and the trial drags on for a year, even an ultra-conservative investment could yield a non-negligible amount of cash.
I understood that you are purchasing an insurance policy (bond)when a bailbondsman is involved. You pay him a fee and he purchases the policy through a prior agreement with another company who provides the coverage. If you don’t show, the insurance co. has to pay. The reason I think this is that I had to bail a friend out years ago and later read in the paper that the bailbondsman hadn’t purchased the bond and had kept the cash. Since the court didn’t know this, they must have accepted some type of forged documentation from the bondsman that said my friend’s bail was covered. There may be some liability for the bondsman if you skip. I don’t know who the bounty hunters work for, but it may be the insuror.
I meant to say that I read in the newspaper that in hundreds of cases over a period of years the bondsman had kept the money. It was a small town and everybody knew each other so that is probably how he (and his brother) got away with it.
I believe that you have it right. I think that the bail bondsman doesn’t put up the actual money but buys a bond from an insurer. In the bookie business this is known as “laying off.” And I would suspect that the bounty hunter works for the insurer.
There are insurance companies that cover bail bondsmen.
Depending on the law those bondsmen may be required to have that insurance (just like the law may require you to have car insurance).
An interesting side happens when the bondsman fronts the whole amount. A few days after you’ve gone back home a representative of the bondsman will be in court asking that your bond (and all the other bonds the bondsman handled for the last week) be reduced.
According to my local paper the bonds will be reduced almost half of the time.
Let’s say your bond was $10,000.
You paid the bondsman 10% of $10,000…you paid $1,000.
Days later the bondsman gets the bond reduced to $5,000.
He gets $5,000 back and YOU now paid him 20%.
A few bondsmen I have talked to have said that when they demand your Grandmother’s house as collateral, they don’t really want your Grandmother’s house. They want you to be properly motivated to come back to court. If you don’t come back, well, they’ll have to deal with your Grandmother’s house.
And YOU’LL have to deal with your Grandmother (and the rest of your family).
In Canada, if the accused fails to appear, the prosecution can ask for a forfeiture hearing in the provincial superior court. The court can order forfeiture of all or part of the money deposited by the accused and his sureties. When the court orders forfeiture, it becomes " a debt due to the Crown " - i.e. the provincial government. What it’s then used for would depend on each provincial government. (See the Criminal Code, s. 771.)
Note that we don’t have bailbondsmen or bounty hunters in Canada (in fact, being a bailbondsman would be a criminal offence), and the amounts of money involved don’t normally approach the amounts required in the U.S.
Related question on the mechanics of “appearing” :
Someone I know (who used a bail bondsman; relatively minor offense, BTW) to get a friend out said that friend did indeed make initial appearance (if that’s what it’s called), but the legal issue was not resolved and another date has been set for later. So bond apparently is not getting refunded til this later date. Is the bond technically for that one appearance? Or does the legal matter have to be entirely resolved in court (ie, a declaration of innocence or sentence conferred)?