Ken W. Good on the real effects of cash-free bail
2024-07-22 00:57:01
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Cutting Through the Chaos on the America Out Loud Network, where we cut through the lies and the propaganda to bring you the out loud truth. I'm your host, Wallace Garneau, and I think we've got a great show for you today. Ken W. Good, a noted bail attorney and a board member of the Professional Bondsman of Texas, is joining us today. Good has worked closely with lawmakers and other individuals on bail matters.
Ken W. Good has over 25 years' experience handling and assisting in a large number of cases that cover a wide spectrum of areas, including business and medical liability claims, products, liability, patent claims, Texas tort, surety, and fidelity bonds. Ken has argued important cases before the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Ken has a distinction of winning his first cases in both the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 9-0,, which means that all of the judges agreed with Ken's arguments. Ken grew up practicing law in the area of medical malpractice defense.
He was taught early on that you are nicer to the opposing side than they are to you, and you are also meaner to the opposing side than they are to you, and you allow the other side to set the tone. Ken has many years of experience drafting proposed charges, arguing the charge in conference, and handling the subsequent appeals. Ken has been the go-to guy for numerous attorneys as a problem solver for big problems. Ken has extensive experience being first chair at trial and in giving legal backup to others. Approximately 15 years ago, Ken was hired by a bondsman to assist in setting aside 45 default judgments, and when this was completed, word of mouth spread and this area has grown into a statewide practice, representing insurance companies to underwrite bail bonds.
Bar admissions, Texas, the U.
S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, and U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Texas being a large state, it has to have three districts. His education, he has a B.A. from Harding Simmons University, a Master's of Education from Texas A&M University in Tarleton, and a J.D. from Texas Tech University School of Law. Ken, a couple of studies that have come up recently.
One is a study from California's Yolo County District Attorney's Office that suggests that the re-offense rate of defendants released on zero bail caused a 163% rise in total crime and a 200% rise in violent crime, whereas a study from researchers at Drexel University finds no evidence that eliminating cash bail increases violent crime at all. I read through those studies. The Yolo County study showed that of the almost 600 people released without bail, 420 of them, that's more than 70%, that's almost 71%, were re-arrested, and 29% of them for violent crimes, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and domestic violence. Individuals released on zero bail were 163% more likely to commit crime than individuals released on bail, re-offending at a 70% higher rate. District Attorney Jeff Riesig stated from the Yolo County study, the results of this recent study on the actual impacts of zero bail policies clearly demonstrate that victimization dramatically increases and public safety is significantly compromised when bail is eliminated as a tool for use by the courts.
The Drexler study showed that there was no change in fatal and non-fatal gun violence in New Jersey after substantial declines in jail incarceration under bail reform. Against this backdrop, we have cities around the country, such as New York and LA, that have George Soros-sponsored DAs who have radically reduced prosecutions. This goes along with police forces around the country where the police are afraid of becoming the next YouTube sensation in a non-positive way due to a confrontation with inner-city residents who are becoming increasingly resistant to arrest. Obviously, you're a highly educated man with a wealth of experience in various areas of law. I noticed you don't mention anything about a personal life in your bio, so I guess the first question I want to ask you is, you went to Texas A&M.
Does that mean that you are not a Longhorn?
Well, I'm not a Longhorn, but I went to Texas Tech, which is not a Longhorn, and it's not an A&M fan either.
We have a Raider, is what we are. Their mascot is someone who rides a horse across the football field.
I asked that because I went to the University of Michigan, and we have the Texas Longhorns on our schedule this year. So when I saw Texas, I thought, I hope he's not a Longhorn.
No, no, but I am married. I have two kids. My youngest just finished her freshman year and is fixing to start her second year of college.
Oh, how exciting. I've got a son in college. That's very exciting.
It's both great and stressful all at the same time. I remember how excited I was to go to college. I vaguely remember my mom crying when my brother went to college, but I can so identify with parents. now that you have kids in college. You worry about them.
You think about, are they making friends? Are they being successful in school? It's a whole new thing when you're going through it. when your kids are going to college. You don't even think about those things.
when you were going through. In our age, I probably called my parents once a week. I want to talk to my kids whenever I want to talk to them, not once a week.
Yeah, I remember when I got divorced, I actually bought both my children's cell phones at relatively young ages, just so I would have access to them. I know exactly what you're talking about. Do you have any hobbies?
Oh, yes. I go through hobbies periodically. I go through hobbies for years at a time. At one point in time, I had a hobby of Christmas lights. At one point, I had a wireless network in my front yard, all of the lights controlled by computers, with a radio station blaring music.
It started out with, I just wanted to turn on the lights all at the same time and turn them off. It went from that to being in the New York Times over my Christmas lights.
Oh, how cool is that?
Yeah, no. My wife told me one time, can you do something halfway? When you decide on a hobby, you have to go all out.
You probably go all out in your professional life, too. That's probably actually a good thing.
It is. There was a guy that taught me to practice law. He's retired now and he's starting to have dementia. He was probably one of the best defense attorneys in the state at the time that he mentored me into practicing law. If I do things right, I give him credit.
If I do things wrong, it's his fault.
Have you ever watched Boston Legal?
Yes. When I was in law school, the big show was LA Law.
Sure.
The law school just about shut down when LA Law was on. That's kind of dated now, but that's how old I am. Boston Legal was after the time where I really wasn't watching TV very much anymore. I don't really watch TV very much at all now.
Well, I ask that only because when you say that you want to be nicer than the opposing counsel, but also meaner than the opposing counsel, I immediately think of Alan Shore, who, of course, is one of the prominent attorneys on that show. What drew you into law?
Oh, gosh, this is a terrible story. My mom and I stayed up on Sunday nights to watch Perry Mason. The news was from 10 to 10.30,, 10.30 to 10.35 was the sports extra, and from 10.35 to 11.35 on Sunday night, they'd play an old episode of Perry Mason. My mom and I stayed up every Sunday night and watched that for years. I always had a dream of going to law school, but it was never a goal.
It was just a dream. I had a car accident when I was a senior in college that ended up going into litigation. Through that, I saw, well, shoot, if my attorney can do that, why can't I do that? Then it became a goal. I got a master's degree, applied to Texas Tech, got in, and then loved it, did well.
I was on Law Review. I was on several national teams, excelled, and helped me get jobs. I was on court TV pretty early in my career, argued appellate cases in the mid-mild world, where we went to a seminar on medical malpractice. They had a section on new and important cases from the appellate courts, and three of the five cases were mine. Even then, the legal industry will bring you down to earth because I argued a pipeline case at the Texas Supreme Court and won it.
Then, probably about five or six years later, I went to an appellate seminar, and they were talking about some of the worst decided cases from the Supreme Court. One of the cases they was mine. I was like, I won that case. Don't tell me, it was wrongly decided.
That's hilarious. Now, you got into bail law because you were hired by a bondsman to assist in setting aside 45 default judgments. Does that mean that there were 45 judgments that there was something wrong with that were going to get thrown out, and so you had to step in and save those?
cases? Yeah, so 45 cases where he didn't file an answer. Once you're served, if you don't file an answer within a certain time, they can just go and enter judgment because you got noticed and you didn't appear, so you decide not to defend yourself. He had 45 judgments entered. He asked somebody, who do you hire to set those aside or help you try to get those set aside?
They said, you need an appellate attorney. He hired me, and we were successful in doing that. Then, as a result of that, from word of mouth, I just started getting more calls in the bail world and started out with bondsmen, having issues, and then developed into a statewide practice. I represent several insurance companies. I'm on the board of the state association.
I'm on the legislative committee. We propose bills to the legislature. We oppose bills at the legislature. I argue before the legislature and on and on and on. I have my own podcast about bail issues.
So we just try to educate legislatures and the public on different aspects of bail and criminal.
justice reform. It's funny how many people will maybe start out in one area, but something draws them into another area. Then they just kind of get sucked into it. It might not be what they intended to make their career on, but all of a sudden, that becomes what it is. It's amazing how many times I hear some version of that story.
You just got to find a job, and then you want to.
excel at it. Then you just follow that. That's really how you create a career. You never know.
where opportunity is going to come from. Absolutely. Now, you specialize in alternative dispute resolution, appeals, business, collections for the bail bond industry, drafting proposed legislation, insurance defense, personal injury, surety and fidelity bond matters, and testifying before the Texas legislature on bail bond matters. I think some of those are pretty obvious. I think everybody's going to know what an appeal is, but what exactly is alternate dispute resolution?
Well, that's like going to mediation. Today in litigation, especially in Texas, before you go to trial, the court's going to send you to mediation.
I like to say the best class that I ever took in my undergrad, my master's, or law school, was a class in law school on nonverbal communication. At some point, I was going to a lot of mediations at one point, and I got really good at reading people.
Ignore what they're saying. What's their body saying? When they're saying, hey, I'm going to make you this offer, and this is all we're ever going to offer you. This is it. We're never going to offer you another dime.
Don't listen to what they're saying. Listen to what their body is telling you. You can pretty much tell whether their mouth may be saying one thing and their body may be saying something else. I'm pretty good at reading people from that. I can tell pretty good if you're lying to me.
It helps me in everything that I do. Also, when I go to mediation, I tell the other side, this is my final offer. I will not offer another dime. Sometimes they're shocked when they come back and say, well, this is what they've offered. I'm like, okay, well, we won't have another encounter.
They said, you meant it? I don't say it unless I mean it. Other people say it all the time. I said, well, I want my reputation to be that if I say this, then that's what I mean. It doesn't mean we're done.
Then we get into the creative aspects of mediation.
It's a very high art. mediation is because everything that you do, you're sending a message. I think a lot of people don't realize you should be looking for receiving the message they're sending, not just the words. If you look at it that way, usually I'm pretty good. If you give me an opening offer, I can tell you where we're going to end up, probably within pretty close.
You said interpersonal communications was a class that taught you those skills?
Well, a class that I took in undergrad, I said law school, but I meant undergrad on nonverbal communication. It's a class on all about what does your body say,
talking. When I was in college, that class was called interpersonal communication. When you say that, I think that's funny, because one of the reasons I ended up in the Marine Corps for a period of time, in the military for eight years, was that I failed that class twice. My parents were paying for my college. After I failed the same class twice, they said, yeah, you're not taking this seriously.
We're not going to pay for this anymore. I was too young to get a loan for college. I guess I'm going to the military for a bit.
My class, like that, was economics. I took economics twice. Every time I took it, I had one grade until the final. Then, after the final, my grade dropped a whole letter grade because of the final. I don't know what it was.
I don't know what, but that happened to me. both times I took it. I passed, but I had a lot higher grade before I took the final.
My interpersonal communications class, the class was taught by an honest-to-God hippie who was getting toward the end of her retirement age. All the other hippies followed Ronald Reagan, of course, and became yuppies in the 80s. She didn't get the memo, so she was still purely a hippie. I remember one time in class, the first time we were talking about it. It should have been called male bashing 101..
We were sitting in class, and she was talking about how men fail to express their feelings and how men need to express their feelings more. Me, being a young Republican, I shot my hand up. When she called on me, I said, well, maybe if you women would drop the let's go shopping attitude and listen to what we actually have to say, the fact that we're not expressing our emotions in nonverbal cues wouldn't bother you so much. Just take us at our word. So anyway, I failed the class.
I had to take it because of the requirement for my major. I took it a second time. She asked me, she said, Wally, what are you doing in my class? I said, what's the requirement for my major? I have to be here.
She said, you realize, I'm just going to fail you a second time. I said, I don't understand. I'm going to regurgitate everything you tell me, whether I agree with it or not. I'm going to be your best student. I'm going to write whatever you want in all of my papers.
I'm going to ace this class. It's not going to be an issue. She said, no, I'm going to fail you. True to her work, I did everything. she said.
She failed everything I did. I went to the dean. The dean said, we got to back our professor. My parents stopped paying for me to go to school. I'm not going to say opportunity came knocking.
It forced me down a different road than I otherwise was going to do. As with bail bond for you, getting into that almost unexpectedly, my life would probably have been very, very different had that.
not happened. When I started getting or developing my own practice in the bail world, I don't know if it was really well received by my partners, but I still had this whole other practice with my partner that we were doing medical malpractice defense. I finally had to start giving that away. We got to the point where someone else was doing all this discovery, but when it came time to go to trial, he still wanted me to go to trial with him. I'm like, you can't keep doing this.
He's like, well, we've never lost together. I'm like, yes, but you've got somebody who's doing all the work. He needs the training. I'm going to trial and he will do just as good a job as I did, maybe in a different way, but he'll be just as good. I finally had to ask him to not take me to trial with him anymore.
He didn't, but it still worked out for him. The other guy did a good job. He wasn't me. The funny thing is, when I started working with this other attorney, I hated him because you couldn't tell what he was thinking when you looked at him, because he had such a good poker face. After five years, because we worked probably for 20 years together, I could tell you exactly what he was thinking by looking at him, and he didn't change.
I just.
got really good at reading him. Sure. What do you do? collections for the bail bond industry?
Is that, like dog, the bounty hunter type of stuff? No, collections is when you agree to pay so much premium or you don't go to court, and so the bondsman has to pay for the bond to the county. That is reaching out to whoever, the defendant, the indemnitors, asking to compensate the.
bondsman for what they agreed to and didn't pay. Purely lawyer stuff. You're not going out to find people. I saw that and I thought that would be an interesting segue for the conversation.
I can't see you, but you can see me. It wouldn't take much for anybody to beat me. A little old lady could knock me over.
I wouldn't pick a fight with anybody.
Moving on to some criminal justice questions in general, since you're a lawyer, I've got some questions. I want to ask you just about our criminal justice system, if you will. I find sometimes that when solving problems with particular systems, there's often a temptation to take many long-held assumptions. Just take those for granted. If you don't mind, I'd like take a giant step backward and ask you, as a member of the criminal justice system, if we were to step back as far as we can and say, let's try to remove any assumptions we have about the American criminal justice system, the first question that comes up to me is, what is the purpose for a criminal justice system?
I would ask you, if our criminal justice system were running.
correctly, what would the purpose of the criminal justice system be?
I'm going to quote the current mayor of New York, Adams, because I think he probably says it better than I could. He said, the foundation of society is public safety. If you can't provide public safety, you don't have a society. What's the purpose of the criminal justice system? It's intended to provide public safety.
I would expand upon that. It allows society to function and grow and be successful.
That makes sense. It provides safety and allows society. That makes all the sense in the world. I asked that because I was a debater in high school, and there was a topic one year. This actually came up before I was in high school, but it was still being used as an example for a particular type of argument that was very effective, but that wasn't used very frequently in debate.
That was called disparate aims. The nature of that argument was that any system that has contradictory goals cannot work, as working on both goals at the same time will prevent either goal from being achieved. Our criminal justice system was the primary example that was always used whenever this type of argument called disparate aims was given. Even though it wasn't a topic, it was a topic that had come up two or three years before I was in high school. It was just a great example.
When I look at our criminal justice system, which was, again, the primary example they used, the contradictory goals of the system were that it was trying to rehabilitate criminals into law-abiding people. At the same time, it was trying to punish them as a deterrent to future crime, not only by the people who were being punished themselves, but by other people that might see that if you get punished, if you get arrested, this is what's going to happen to you. There was a deterrent effect there. When I see that, I see that as that.
disparate impact of those two goals. I think that's too simplistic, because I think a lot of people don't realize that our criminal justice system is intended to be very individual in nature. When you are arrested for the first time, then the goal of the criminal justice system is to apply only the amount of pressure needed to be applied to you to get you to conform, to be a productive citizen. What's going to be needed for you as a first-time offender is little. That's what the system would assume.
As you get arrested more and more times, if I'm a 10-time offender and I get arrested for the same thing that you've been arrested for the first time, then the system would assume that more pressure needs to be applied to me and very little pressure needs to be assigned to you. The pressure that needs to be assigned to me may include that I'm a danger to public safety. Part of that pressure may require incarceration, because one of the theories of criminal justice is, I don't know if we call it punishment, but we call it. if you will not conform, then you need to be isolated away from society for the sake of public safety. If we think of it in those terms, I think we think of it, that's where we've lost our way, because we keep saying, well, if you've been arrested for stealing a Cadillac converter, and I've been arrested for it too, you've been arrested for it once, and I've been arrested for it 10 times, LA and New York City with those DAs would say, well, you all need to be treated the same because you're both committed the same crime.
That's not how our criminal justice system was built, and that's where we're going astray.
currently. Well, if we assume that we do, that, it does still work where, if I'm a first defender, I don't get as strict of a penalty as you do, and I hear you that, as they make mandatory minimums and things like that, we move in that direction.
Okay, so if you don't go to prison, I get that the conflict isn't there, but once you're in prison, isn't there a conflict between both trying to punish and rehabilitate at the same time?
Well, I don't believe, is the purpose of.
prison to rehabilitate? I think that's one of the hopes, but I think by the time you get to prison, you have a debt to society, and think of it as a debt for a lack of public safety. We even say, you've paid your debt to society, so you get out of jail, but I don't think there's a conflict there. I mean, the purpose of prison is to isolate people who will not conform to be productive members of society and who are jeopardizing public safety. The problem we have right now is our prisons are full, and they're full of really, really dangerous people who are not conforming, and we have new people coming to the country all the time, and we're finding out more and more that a lot of them are criminal elements from the countries they came from, and so what?
would we expect from them, but more crime? You're in Texas. Do you have any idea what percent of the people that are being committed for crimes are legal residents versus people that are in the country illegally? What percentage? In Texas, in Michigan, I'm sure it's very different.
Let me say what percentage, no, but we have a big old scandal going on right now because we have a 13-year-old girl in Houston who snuck out of her house in the last three weeks, and she was found by two gentlemen who were here illegally, but they were also members of gangs from where they came from, and they raped her for over an hour, and then they killed her, and they dumped her body into this little stream, probably really close to where they live, and so it's all come out, and they've, I mean, you can imagine it's just gone crazy. The lieutenant governor has announced that they're going to propose a constitutional amendment about these types of crimes cannot be released from jail, and they need to be held without bail, and that they're going to name it in this girl's honor. So right now, you've got a really hot topic going on, and I think it's the Republican Convention that's going on right now. We've highlighted that story, and maybe some others on the night where they were talking about crime. The big debate we have right now going on is we have one party that is denying that crime is increasing, and we've got one party highlighting that crime is increasing, and the two studies that you've mentioned show the two exact problems that we have.
We have one that's just going data, that's being data-driven, like Yolo County, and we've got the other one that does so many hair splits to make it look like crime isn't going up. It's like, well, when you look at people that are doing this situation with this type of gun, with this, oh, crime is not increasing. By the time you get through reviewing it, you're like, how many times can we split that hair to get to that conclusion? Yeah, I noticed that too. When I.
at the Drexler study, it was looking only at gun violence, and I thought, isn't that interesting that they're focusing only on gun violence? That's a very, very specific study on a very, very small subset of crime. Most crimes just don't involve gun violence. They may involve guns, but not violence. So yeah, I saw that, and I thought that looks like it's intentionally misleading.
So yeah, we'll get into the bail bond questions after the break. I've got one more question before we take the break, and then we'll hit bail bond questions really hard in the second half. When we talk about our prison system, I've always looked at it as almost like a national timeout system, like sending an errant child to their room to get them out of society for a period of time, let them think about what they did, and hopefully, when they come back, they're better people. But it wasn't always like that. I look at 250 years ago.
Jail was where you were held until your sentence was carried out. Sentences usually involved a mixture of corporal punishment or public humiliation, or both. We gradually moved away from that in terms of punishment based on the Supreme Court interpreting—and I may be wrong here, if I'm please correct me—on the Supreme Court interpreting cruel and unusual punishments as if it says cruel or unusual instead. And to me, this national timeout system of punishment has been an abject failure based on any real metrics somebody might choose to use. I guess my question is, what are your feelings on whether or not our system of using time as a primary form of punishment has proven to be a failure, and if so, what do you replace it with?
I don't agree that our prison systems have been a failure. In fact, I think that we have two situations or two different times in our history where they've been very successful, both right, probably before we started loosening our laws currently, this current round of bail reform, criminal justice reform. But we went through all of this. It's like a cycle. We went through this in the 60s, where we were feeling safe or safer, and so we started being more forgiving on our criminal laws.
More people were released from jail. We started having crime increase, so we started having a national debate, and we had one party that refused to do anything to help address it, and so we had a backlash, and then we had the war on crime, and we got Reagan. We're doing the same thing now, where we're feeling more safe, and so we started loosening our criminal laws. Look at what California did with Prop 47, and now they're in the middle of a proposition to repeal it because the ramifications from it have been so bad, and you're seeing that across the country. We felt more safe.
We were more forgiving. Crime is now increasing, and now we have a backlash, and we have a complete refusal and a denial that crime is even going up by one party, and so we're going to have the same result we had in the 60s. We're going to have a backlash to the point where the pendulum is going to swing completely to the opposite direction, and it's going to be just as bad as it was in the 60s, and the people that are refusing to acknowledge crime is increasing are the ones that they should accept responsibility for that when the pendulum swings so hard again, because their refusal to work to find a solution that is successful is what's causing that. So strict works. Accountability works.
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So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to cutting through the chaos of the America Outloud network. I'm your host, Wallace Garneau, and we are here again with Ken W. Good, a noted bail attorney and a board member of the Professional Bondsman of Texas. We are here to talk about all of the problems we're having the second half of the show with bail bond. So, let's get right into bail bond matters.
Let's assume, Ken, for just a moment, that in some areas there really is no increase in crime when cash bail is eliminated. I'm a little suspicious, as I said in the first half of the show, about that Drexler study, as it focuses only on gun violence and ignores all other crimes, which seems to be looking at an awfully specific and likely cherry-picked subset of crime. But let's assume, for just a, that there are areas where cash bail has been eliminated and crime has not gone up. I know that might be a ludicrous assumption, but let's just, for the sake of argumentation, make that assumption for just a moment. How much would you say?
the lack of a corresponding rise of crime is driven by the lack of a cause-and-effect relationship between the elimination of cash bail at those places and those higher crime rates, and how much of it is driven by lower rates of policing and lower rates of prosecution, even where policing occurs? So, in New York City, for example, a lot of crimes simply aren't prosecuted anymore. In LA, you can now shoplift up to, I believe it's $950 worth of stuff, and it's not prosecuted at all. So, obviously, if I'm counting prosecutions, and that's how I'm getting my crime statistics, if I just say I'm not going to prosecute crimes, it doesn't matter what I do with bail bonds. If I stop prosecuting crimes, I'm not going to get a rise in crime.
Well, I mean, let me tell you how, hand-in-hand.
these two things go, because it's all on your appearance rate. I mean, there's no other form of release than the private industry that gets people to court. And so, like, Harris County, started these simple release procedures, and, you know, immediately the DA said, well, the failure to appear rate's gone up by 50%. Then the police did a study for a week of just a week's worth of dockets for the misdemeanor courts that were using mostly simple release, and they found a 75% failure to appear rate. And then HarrisCountyCourtWatch.com downloaded two years' worth of data from the misdemeanor courts and used the same formulas and found a two-year average of an 80% failure to appear rate.
And the Yolo County DA, he says that that simple release is what they use across California for misdemeanors, and they have the same thing, an 80% failure to appear rate. Well, criminal cases can't go forward without the defendant. So if you have 80% of your defendants not showing up, then that creates utter chaos, because you can't go forward on their case, and you're just constantly adding more cases to the hopper. And so at some point you have, like in California, you have a deadline to go to court or dismiss the case. So you can outlast the court.
You can have the case dismissed just from time, and what does that do? That sends a green light to criminals that we can get away with committing more crime. That's how your misdemeanor cases suddenly become the training ground for tomorrow's felony cases, because it creates so much accountability, you can't hold anybody accountable, and then nobody's showing up for court, and then what do you know? Who's shocked that crime's going up when that's happened?
So you're saying that if I go out and I rob from a liquor store, and I get arrested, and they arraign me and send me out with cash-free bail, so I'm back out in the street, and I go out and rob another liquor store, and they arrest me, and I go in front of arraignment, and I get out on cash-free bail, and I go ahead and I do it again, and I get out on bail, and I do it again, and I get out on cash-free bail. I read about a kid, I think it was on Fox News, or the Daily Wire, whatever it was, I read about a kid in New York, and I shouldn't say he's a kid, I'm sure he's an adult, younger than me, though. So I read about this guy in New York that was bragging that he'd been arrested more than 120 times and had not spent a night in jail. Is that what you're talking about, where I can just continue to commit crimes, but because there's a length of time for each one of them, where they can start the trial, they just throw it out? Well, no, but it's very related.
So.
when you do this charge-based release system, it is similar, because no matter how many times you get arrested, since we've decided that if you get arrested for that crime, you're going to be released on cashless bail, no matter how many times you get arrested, you're going to be released by simple release, because that's a charge-based release mechanism system. What I'm saying is, okay, you get arrested, you get arraigned, they give you a pinky swear bond where you're just promising to show up, that's what simple release is, and you don't show up. Well then, on that case, not the next one and the next one, but on that case, it's put on hold until you come back into the criminal justice system. And let's just make it even worse, it's a misdemeanor in California, and you go to the next state, Nevada, you're just going to stay in LA for a while. They don't extradite anymore for misdemeanors.
So you can avoid criminal prosecution completely by just going to the next state, or if you just don't get arrested again, or worse, they stop arresting people for that crime, but you've got a case in the system, they can't make you go back to court, because they're not going to arrest you for failing to appear for a misdemeanor. That case is just going to eventually get dismissed.
We're talking just misdemeanors, there, are we talking felonies too?
Well, the problem with this bail reform system is that what they're doing with misdemeanors, it then starts bleeding over to felonies. Like Harris County is a great example, where nobody that was charged with murder or capital murder was ever released on a personal bond until all this bail reform mumbo, jumbo, and then suddenly we were demanding that judges release people charged with capital murder and murder on a personal bond, and it started happening. I mean, it got to the point where I've started arguing that in Harris County, in Houston, the third largest county in the country, you got one free murder, like your vicious dog, you got one free bite before they declared that you were dangerous. You got one free murder before they were going to hold you in the jail, so you had to commit a second murder before they refused to release you. I mean, it's ridiculous.
Now, let's say that I commit one crime and I wait until just before they're going to throw that out, because I didn't show up, obviously, for court, and I wait until just before they're going to throw that out, and I commit another crime, and they're both misdemeanors or felonies that the system works on. Does the clock start over for the first crime?
No, no, they'll bring you into court. I mean, they'll bring you in, they'll magistrate, they'll give you simple release on the second one, and they'll probably give you simple release on the first one, and you'll promise to show up for court, and they'll set a short court date, and then you won't show up, and then your case will ultimately be dismissed.
So if I never show up for court, basically, I never go to jail, no matter how many crimes I commit?
Well, it depends. At some point, you would hope, like in Texas, at some point, they'll quit doing this. I mean, I don't know. In Houston, I don't know if they'll ever quit. We've got situations where people were granted 16 bonds in one case, and that tells you how many times they didn't show up for court.
But here's the problem, is like in Harris County, when we started pointing all these problems out, they quit, requiring people to show up for court. So, oh, no, you don't have to come to court unless we request it. And so if they dismiss the case, they don't have to have them come to court. So they start playing games. with that.
I mean, getting people to come to court and stare at the judge and stare at the prosecutor, how cases are settled, or they plead guilty for a lesser sentence. But if they don't ever come to court, how can you get people to plead? You can't. And if they're not there, the only thing you can do is
dismiss. How about for the crime of coming into the country illegally? Is it the same thing there, where they give you a date to come in for your... I'm assuming these people are claiming asylum, but you get a date for your asylum hearing, and they just never show up for it. What happens there?
Well, okay, that's, you know, a different system, because bail or crimes are governed by the different states. Yeah, this is federal, sure. But that's federal, and it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding. And, you know, bail set there is, you know, it's a whole, completely different system.
But, you know, you're going to show up, they're going to either admit you to bail, a federal, you know, immigration bond, and then they're going to give you a hearing date. And, you know, most people that get those don't show up. And they're just in society living. And again, it's even worse. there.
I mean, you're going to have to commit another crime for anybody to know that you violated your order to appear. So they're basically playing catch and release.
It's like fishing, and you put the fish back in. every time you catch, one, just goes right back.
into the pond. It can, but, you know, a lot of times when they have an immigration hold, they'll get arrested in the state system. And so when they post a bond, you know, that would release them from the state system, but then they would be turned over to ICE. But, you know, the problem there is, well, then ICE gets them and deports them. So they avoid punishment for their state crime.
And, you know, like the two cases that are pending in Harris County, where they killed the 13-year-old girl, you know, they're like, oh, there's ICE hold, so they'll never get out of jail, even though the bond set at $3 million. I'm like, no, if somebody was stupid enough to post the $3 million bond, they would get released to ICE custody, and then ICE would deport them. That's what they want, because then they would avoid prosecution. I mean, so people don't understand how the system works. I mean, we don't want them released.
And, you know, but that's an example of a problem we have with the current system. Families are happy to say, oh, yeah, we're here legally. So, you know, so you don't know that there's an ICE hold, and then you post bail. Well, then it's a race. So now they've been released to ICE to then be deported.
And you're, and the bonds movement is going to be responsible for paying that full amount of that bond. if they don't appear. And once they get deported, then you're not going to have a defense. You're just going to owe the money. And so bondsmen don't want people to get out of jail who have ICE holds, who are going to be deported, because that hurts them more than anybody.
The problem is, I mean, the laws are built to keep that information from us, and we're working with families. And if they decide to misrepresent the truth, then those things happen. And we're racing to get a warrant issue to bring them back before they're deported. Well, it's a double-edged sword, too, because,
I mean, we've known for years that states like California will not release people to ICE because they don't want them to be deported. In many cases, they just release them back out of the system because they don't want to release them to ICE where they may get deported. But now you're saying that if you follow federal law and release them to ICE, then that's a problem also because they just deport them and they never get tried for the crime they actually committed. That's.
right. That's right. In California, I've just read an article recently where the immigration situation in California, it should be reaching a tipping point soon. And it's going to be over this marijuana business profile that they've set up, because they've set up this whole legalized system and they're going to make so much money off of it. And it's completely failed.
And the cartels are stepping in and taking over the system. And they're continuing their illegal operations. And a lot of immigrants that are brought to this country illegally are brought to work in that industry for them. And it's a growing and growing problem. And if you believe, like I do, that 80 percent of all crime arises indirectly or directly from the drug problems, well, then you can see that we're not going to have public safety and it's going to get to a tipping point really quickly if we don't take a stand.
Well, the drug problems, I mean, my God,
there's enough fentanyl coming into this country to kill every man, woman and child. I'm surprised nobody's made a bomb out of fentanyl yet, because it takes such a little small amount to kill somebody. You would think that could be weaponized like sarin gas or something. I know it's a particulate, so it's not the same as sarin, but you would think somebody.
could weaponize that. That's what scares the hell out of me. Well, I did not realize all the things about fentanyl and that, you know, I mean, it's really, really bad. But, you know, how many drugs today are mixed with fentanyl? Well, everything.
And people say, well, why would they do that? You know, there's a commercial on TV. Why would drug dealers mix fentanyl with? Because it's so cheap. And if you do it in the right amount, you can make your profit margin on your other, your heroin, your cocaine drugs go up.
It's just when you get the mixture wrong, it kills people. And it doesn't take, I mean, we're not dealing with rocket scientists here. We're dealing with.
drug dealers who are trying to make more money. Well, and a drug that it takes such a ridiculously small amount to kill that it's almost impossible to get it right consistently unless you've got a, unless you've got a really professional lab. But back to BailBot. If I play devil's advocate for just a moment, because I do think the other side of the debate has some good points, it seems there are two basic reasons to allow to eliminate cash bail. One is the wealthier someone is, the easier time they have being able to afford the bail.
So there's a fairness question there. And the other is that it represents a way to reduce incarceration rates without letting convicted felons, which is to say those who have actually been found guilty of a crime in our court system, out. Is it true that those who are poor have a harder time putting up cash bail than those who are not? Is there a system that is for people that don't have money to still be able to put up?
something for cash bail? Well, yes, I completely disagree with that. Those are problems. And especially, you know, the federal courts have said this simple release needs to be an alternative. It needs to be something that's available for the poor.
But, as the courts have both held, the private industry system is constitutional. And here's the big problem. To be able to use something else, you have to have something that is an alternative that works as well. You know, there's a mayor who used to be a former judge who was on a News Nation town hall talking about this very issue. And she said, look, until you have an alternative to the private industry that has the same high appearance rate and the same high accountability, then you don't have an alternative.
And so, you know, we're pushing these simple release mechanisms that have a high failure to appear rate and no accountability. So they are not alternatives. And so my point I come to, you can say it's not fair. You can say that it hurts some people, when I completely disagree with it. But you don't have any alternative that performs as well and that doesn't create chaos and problems with accountability and creates more crime.
I have to ask one more question. as a devil's advocate. Is it easier to stand trial in terms of the likelihood of being found not guilty if someone is out on bond versus somebody who stays?
incarcerated because they can't afford the bond? Okay, I think that's probably yes. But I dispute the premise. I mean, to say that you're either going to be in jail or you're going to be out on private industry bond is not correct, because the court will review you. I mean, I think they should do it on a limited basis to say, okay, are you poor?
All right. Well, then what's the alternative to a cash bond? What can you do? But the problem with that is, hey, okay, I'm going to release you. What if we overlaid a high system of accountability so that if you get a simple release and then you don't show up for court, you're not eligible for another simple release?
because you had your option. Give them twice. Give them two times. You had your chance. You had two chances.
You don't get anything after that. That's the problem we're having. When you say give them a time or two.
times, it sounds like you're getting.
. I was going to ask that in a couple of questions. It sounds like you're saying that there's a possibility where maybe, if you have never skipped on bail, we might let you out once. But once you skip on bail, sorry, buddy, you don't get a second shot.
Is that what you're saying? I'm saying I think that that would be better than what we're doing right now. The problem is, the appearance rate is so much lower for any simple release mechanism. So that's why it needs to be used very rarely. How about house arrest?
Or an ambulance of some kind, so they can pick him up. Okay, so do you know, using a GPS monitor on you, they're making you pay for it. It's more expensive to pay for that than to pay for private bail. Is it really? Oh, my God, you're paying a fee per day.
So if you pay 20 bucks a day times 30, that's just one month. I mean, let's make it $5 a day. But if you're paying it for every 30 days, and you're having to pay it to stay out of jail for house arrest. I mean, house arrest, I don't think with a GPS monitor is, I think it's worse than having a private bondsman. You're not checking in with anybody, you're just charging your monitor.
And what happens if you just cut it off? I mean, we've had too many examples in Texas where we discovered that nobody's doing the monitoring on the GPS on the weekends, because they didn't have the money to have somebody there monitoring them on the weekends, or after five. So if you just cut it off after five, nobody would know about it till the next day at nine. Those are not alternatives. No, that doesn't sound very workable at all.
So, basically, what you're saying is, cash bail is here to stay, there is no alternative. Earlier in the show, you were talking about the cycle of crime, where we start getting stricter on crime, as Rudy Giuliani did years ago with New York, the crime rates dry up. And if the crime rates dry up, obviously, that means fewer people in prison, because you're not filling them up over and over. Maybe you have more people going in once, but you're not refilling them as they're coming out. And then you say that as we get leaner on crime, what happens is, when crime pays, people commit more of it, I guess might be one way to put it.
Is that accurate?
Yes. I would even say, when you have the city of Houston, you have a city within the city, and you have a small percentage of people who are committing a large part of the crime. But then between the two cities, there's this gray area. And they're looking to see, how's the crime city performing? Are they getting away with it?
Well, if they're getting away with more and more crime, they're like, well, I'm enjoying that, because that looks pretty good, and they're not having any penalties. But if they see accountability being overlaid to that, they're like, ooh, I don't want that. I'm going to be in the law-abiding part of the city. And so there's a good example. There's a case called Sanchez versus Alabama, that was where the county had to live under one of these injunctions for simple release for both felonies and misdemeanors.
They had to do it for four years as they appealed, and they ultimately won the appeal. But during that four years, crime started going up, because they could not hold people. They could not hold them accountable, because they were living under an injunction that.
just said crime-based release. So it sounds like you're almost creating a redlining situation, where if you want to have people where there's a high crime rate in one municipality, you say, we're going to have no cash bail there. And if you want to have a lower crime rate in another municipality, you say, we're going to have cash bail here, and you can actually get all of the crime to go where the cash bail, where the cash-free system is. And then the people in the other systems, so we're actually, is that a two-tiered society? Well, I do know that in.
Montgomery County, which is right next to Harris County, they were arrested some guys for catalytic theft one night, and they were driving to the jail, the county jail, and the guys were like, well, this isn't the way to the Harris County jail. And they're like, well, sorry, guys, I hate to tell you this, but you veered into Montgomery County, and Montgomery County prosecutes crime. And so they were all upset a whole way to the jail, because they had veered out into Montgomery County, and Montgomery County built a sign on county line on Highway 45 that says, this is Montgomery County, we support the police, and we prosecute crime. Yeah,
they won't make that mistake again. That's right, they won't make that mistake again. I got to ask this, California's number one export. these past three and a half years have been people, and Texas is getting more of those people than any other state. But Texas is also getting a lot of people from over the border.
I'm curious, two things, is Texas getting more people from over the border or from California? And secondly, are the people moving from California?
taking their politics with them? Okay, so more people are moving from California than illegal immigrants are entering into Texas currently, but that's only because Texas has spent billions of dollars building a wall, like Trump was doing. And so they have really spent a bunch of money building walls and using the National Guard to prevent people from coming into Texas. And so you start to see a lot, all those people moving over into other states. In fact, there's a story out in the last week where the Biden administration has started taking people that are coming into California and then shipping them to Texas without Texas' knowledge, because Texas has decreased.
I mean, in fact, Biden, in all the stuff he's been doing in the last two weeks, he has been taking credit for illegal immigration entries in Texas going down. It absolutely has zero to do with him. In fact, he's been filing suits to stop what Texas is trying to do.
I want to thank you for coming, Ken. It was a great, great conversation. We're unfortunately out of time, but I think we got through everything that I wanted to cover. For our listeners, as always, thank you for tuning in. Please tell others who might be interested in cutting through the chaos to listen in either on Saturday and Sunday at 9 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time, or on podcast, whenever they have time. And we will see you next week at the same time and will be, once again, time to Get Involved and to Get Loud on America, Out Loud.
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