BAILSPEAK: Pre-Licensing & Continuing Bail Education

California Department of Insurance Approvals 172113 & 172114

1852 West 11th Street #412

Tracy, CA 95376-3736

1-877-726-9092

April 16, 2017

If commercial bail is unfair to poor people then, logically, expensive trial attorneys are unfair to poor people who cannot afford ‘Dream Team’ like legal representation.

“This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to reduce the number of people detained pretrial, while addressing racial and economic disparities…simply because of their inability to afford [expensive trial lawyers] money bail.”

RE: Opinion Editorial Opposition to Senate Bill 10 & Assembly Bill 42 “Bills”

To All These Present Respectable Greetings:

May this personal, layman’s opinion editorial find all of the aforementioned persons and those close to them enjoying good health and happiness.

It is a foregone conclusion that there is much to do on other matters, so I will make every effort to be as succinct as is possible with a very simple set of long standing concepts that a group of California legislators are taking action to, arguably, delve into a social construct whereby thousands of hard working and taxpaying citizens who contribute not just to local economies as consumers who spend great deals of business related monies common to running small, medium, and large sole proprietorships and corporations, but it is incontrovertibly critical to fully understand the massive financial blow to the People of the State of California on local levels both economically and in terms of public safety as a whole.

1.

THE LOSS OF MILLIONS

IN LOCAL REVENUES

The proposed Bills will predictably end untold millions of dollars— literally pumped into local coffers annually—to many local city and county governments by and through the vehicle of summary judgment monies pursuant to California Penal Code §1463 et seq; moreover, county district attorney offices and county counsel offices would also lose a stream of revenue pursuant to California Penal Code §1305.3 in successfully defeating bail motion instant matters concerning bail bond forfeitures.

Stated differently, commercial bail (hereafter called, “CB”) is a totally self sustaining private industry that guarantees the appearance of newly arrested and charged un-sentenced persons, and, if this obligation is not met then the penal amount, set by bench officers in each California county within the meaning of California Penal Code §1269b(c), will become due and owing with that amount being distributed as indicated in ¶4 above.

Today a person who has been arrested with or without an indemnitor co-signer can engage in a private civil contract with a bail bond agency to be released on CB immediately; however, the crafter or crafters of the Bills labored to make the language of said Bills so horrendously complex with the repeal and largely unrelated replacement of a massive part of the existing Constitutional Right to Bail system so confusing that newly arrested persons will most likely be released via government funded (read taxpayer funded) pretrial release (hereafter called, “PR”) but only after a process that can take a minimum of 48 hours and with the undeniable need to create and incorporate massive and horrifically expensive bureaucracies is created and implemented, again, at the total cost placed upon California taxpayers.

In essence, the Bills may have the affect of ultimately replacing taxpayer free CB, that gives monies back to local and city governments, with PR that will most likely have insidious affects on the economies of every local government and the citizens of those heavily taxed communities who are most likely not aware of the threat that is looming in California by the proposed Bills and the authors and legislative supporters of said Bills.

At this point of this opinion editorial the “slippery slope” affect is predictably this future question: does it not stand to infallible logic that if commercial bail is to be deemed a “wealth-based scheme” that creates “two systems of justice” then isn’t it also true that trial lawyers create an inequality of justice where poor people cannot afford expensive attorneys, thus creating a need for pre-attorney services for poor people?

2.

PRETRIAL RELEASE COMPARED TO COMMERCIAL BAIL – WHAT EACH DOES

Let us here now engage in a rudimentary comparison of CB and PR pros and cons.

CURRENT PRETRIAL RELEASE COMPARED TO COMMERCIAL BAIL - WHAT EACH

DOES NOT AND DOES DO

It is estimated that tens of thousands of taxpaying people that CB employs or contracts with as independent contractors and who pay taxes may be laid off, and this serious eventuality is not being considered, or that good people will be forced into unemployment and eventually welfare.

3.

WITH POLITICIAN SUPPORTED PRETRIAL RELEASE TAXPAYERS WILL HAVE TO ENDURE…

Is it the right time to be creating massive, taxpayer funded bureaucracies that destroys public safety, jobs in the private sector, and eliminates revenues to our local and state communities?

4.

SO HOW DO TRIAL LAWYERS HAVE AN INTEREST IN OPPOSING THE BILLS?

The arguments raised in the Bills are curiously reflective and applicable to how “poor people” also cannot afford the best non-government minds in the justice system, but one has to wonder if this curious concept applies to just criminal defense attorneys or also to attorneys who practice civil and other areas of law?

For example, let us here replace the ongoing references to “bail” in the senate version of the Bills with trial attorneys (hereafter called, “TA”) to illustrate what the next logical step would be by California lawmakers who present as against “poor people” having to bail out of jail via CB, which has a financial interest to guarantee the appearance of its clients irrespective of their economic abilities or lack thereof.

·         “Detaining people simply due to an inability to afford an expensive [TA] violates American principles of equal protection and fundamental fairness.”

·         “Nationwide, the majority of people who are unable to meet [TA retainer requirements] fall within the poorest third of society.”

·         “The consequences of [not being able to afford a TA]…include a greater likelihood of innocent people pleading guilty to a crime, longer sentences upon conviction, loss of employment, income, and housing, and traumatic family disruption—disproportionately affect people of color and low-income people.”

·         “The [TA] system, which requires people to pay nonrefundable deposits to private [TA] …often leaves people in debt and drives them and their families further into poverty.”

Finally, the above is followed by what is clearly an acute failure to meet the duty of candor with the public by claiming that CB, “…does not improve rates of appearance in court or enhance public safety.”  Stated differently, someone is either wholly ignorant of how effective bounty hunters are or is lying—it cannot be both ways.

5.

SOLUTIONS TO IMAGINED PROBLEMS BUT SOLUTIONS NONETHELESS

Rather than arrive at a very simple set of solutions, the Bills are unbelievably complex in language and offer no real projections at the obvious tens of millions of dollars to implement and operate what the Bills are proposing to do.

Today summary judgment monies go to local governments, but the Bills are designed to strip that away, so, since the local governments will be stripped of millions in annual revenues, why not alter where summary judgment monies from forfeited bail bonds paid by CB go?

Since the main argument is about “poor people,” why not redirect summary judgment monies to a bail premium assistance program whereby money paid on bad commercial bonds go to assist “poor people” to afford CB?  50%, for example, of summary judgment monies may be diverted to county jails that have installed trust accounts specifically for “poor people” insofar that CB bail agents receive a county check at the rate of premium set up by the California Department of Insurance and the bail agents property and casualty insurance surety.

Why not, at the same time, form a private attorney financial assistance program whereby “poor people” may have access to a private legal counsel retainer trust fund to either opt to be represented by a public defender at taxpayer costs or a private trial lawyer from summary judgment monies and whose retainer is paid by the superior court clerk?

Explained differently, split summary judgment monies evenly between a CB assistance program and trial lawyer assistance program; this will solve the problems raised in both Bills quickly, easily and without the dramatic and negative affects the Bills will predictably do to California citizens with an emphasis on protecting the People of the State of California because contrary to the outrageous claim that CB does not “…enhance public safety” experts in CB know that CB does in fact “…enhance public safety.”

It is finally worth reiterating the strong likelihood that the Bills will cause job losses at a rate far greater than the bloated bureaucracies—that will require the need for unintended and for the moment unforeseen support bureaucracies—to the extent that the California Department of Insurance has dedicated employees that oversee CB and may forced into layoff, CB will suffer hundreds of job losses, bounty hunters will not be pursuing fugitives from justice at the current rates, and the thousands of vendors who depend on CB as customers will equally suffer; moreover, insurance company employees in other states will also suffer job losses because sureties doing business in California employ countless people to manage their CB departments.

The suffering described will predictably occur because of a fundamentally flawed ideology stemming from pure ignorance of how CB is a service to the justice system, but, more importantly, because supporters of the Bills presume and even assume that “poor people” never provoked reasonable suspicion from a peace officer that then evolved into probable cause, or that “poor people” are in jail and must bail because a lawyer working for a county district attorney filed criminal charges and all of which is within the scope and meaning of existing laws.

It is my hope that this personal layman’s opinion editorial will be of use in aiding lawmakers and interested parties, such as victims of crime, in evaluating the Bills that are opposed heretofore and hereafter.

The opinions and conclusions rendered are based off my training and experience consisting of 25 years bounty hunting, 19 years as a bail bond agency owner, 20 years as a trainer of bounty hunters, 10 years as a bail agent pre-licensing instructor, nearly 14 years in military and civilian law enforcement, and from working as an expert witness in bail and bounty hunting matters concerning criminal and civil matters because CB is governed by hundreds of laws and rules and regulations amounting to accountability of a private industry that, once again, generates jobs, tax revenues, and millions upon millions of dollars that currently goes to cities and counties by and through private contract analysis with local governments via the transaction of bail.

Respectfully Submitted,

 Signature on File

Rex Venator

Bail Education Instructor

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Senator Ben Allen

Capitol Office

State Capitol, Room 5072

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: (916) 651-4026

Fax: (916) 651-4926

District Office

2512 Artesia Blvd., #320

Redondo Beach, CA 90278-3279

Phone: (310) 318-6994

Fax: (310) 318-6733

Assembly Member Susan T. Eggman

Capitol Office:

State Capitol

P.O. Box 942849

Sacramento,CA 94249-0013

Tel: (916) 319-2013

Fax: (916) 319-2113

District Office:

31 East Channel Street

Suite 306

Stockton, CA 95202

Tel: (209) 948-7479

Fax: (209) 465-5058

Senator Scott Wiener

Capitol Office

State Capitol, Room 4066

Sacramento, CA 95814-4900

Phone: (916) 651-4011

San Francisco District Office

455 Golden Gate Avenue, Suite 14800

San Francisco, CA 94102

Phone: (415) 557-1300

Meet the Architects of the Unconstitutional, Pro-Criminal, Anti-Victim, and $3.7 Billion Tax Spike Group Proposing SB-10 and the (Failed) AB-42.

"It is estimated that tens of thousands of taxpaying people that [commercial bail] employs or contracts with as independent contractors and who pay taxes may be laid off, and this serious eventuality is not being considered, or that good people will be forced into unemployment and eventually welfare."

"If commercial bail is unfair to poor people then, logically, expensive trial attorneys are unfair to poor people who cannot afford ‘Dream Team’ like legal representation."

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN to read a hard-hitting reality check Opinion Editorial by Rex Venator

Copyright 2017 Bailspeak, All Rights Reserved

SB 562 $400 Billion Single Payer Bill – Failed!

RECALL PRO-COMMUNIST ROB BONTA?

Is it Time to Recall California Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D) Alameda?

Opinion Editorial by Rex Venator

Is there a concerted effort to crash the California economy?  One has to wonder when connecting some rudimentary news reports and legislative efforts with Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D) Alameda (hereafter called “Bonta”) having either authored or co-authored shocking bills.

At a preliminary estimated cost of an unfunded $3.78 Billion Dollars, Bonta introduces AB 42 to free criminals, create victims, drive tens of thousands out of work, and overload the courts, district attorney offices, and deplete local governments and law enforcement of valuable tools and revenues.

At a preliminary estimated cost of an unfunded $400 Billion Dollars—“more than three (3) times the current state budget”—Bonta co-authors SB 526 to create a so-called “single-payer” state run healthcare system and eliminate medical insurance companies from California.  This bill by itself would utterly crash California’s economy, put thousands out of work, and, in combination with AB 42, it isn’t out of the question that anarchy would follow.

None of this is shocking.  It is a longstanding strategy to “overload and crash the system” in order to then offer an alternative such as communism!  Is this suggestion over the top?  Really?

Well, Bonta also authored a bill to eliminate the prohibitions of communists serving in California government jobs to begin with; that’s right. 

Bonta’s fingerprints are on several attempts to predictably and totally annihilate California as we know it today.

Luckily, Bonta had to back down from AB 22 and pull it—for now.

In my personal opinion—setting Bonta’s attack on commercial bail aside—Bonta is not fit to hold public office, and it is also my personal opinion that Bonta cannot be reasoned with; he is an ideologue with, arguably, a hidden overall agenda to insidiously destroy California and put its citizens in great peril.

So, is it time to recall Bonta?

To be fair to the argument, Bonta can cave under political pressure.  “For that, I am sorry,” he says to those whose family members were murdered by communists and pulls AB 22.

Hertzberg’s and Bonta’s Bail Reform Bills are Unconstitutional, Pro-Crime, Anti-Victim, and would cause a massive financial blow to California Taxpayers.

Opinion Editorial by Rex Venator with quotes by Retired Judge Quentin Kopp

Cities and Counties will Lose Millions in Direct Revenues

The amount of bail an arrestee who has been booked into a county jail on a probable cause fresh charge or warrant on filed charges is set by way of the bail schedules that are established by judges in California counties and not by commercial bail agencies or corporations (hereafter called, “The Bail Industry”) that each promise to guarantee the appearance of the accused.

For example, if The Bail Industry cannot produce the defendant within very specific time frames then The Bail Industry must produce the penal amount of the bond to the applicable superior court clerk, exempli gratia, a $100,000.00 bond put up by The Bail Industry is $100,000.00 that goes to the local government in the county where the case is being heard should the bail client remain at-large beyond statutory limits.  Hertzberg and Bonta will make that $100,000.00 windfall potential vanish with the mere stroke of the governor’s pen.

“Every year more than 300,000 defendants choose to be released on bail in California. However, two bills seek to take this constitutional right away from defendants and replace it with an expensive and onerous pretrial release system.”

Extrapolate the above the numbers of defendants roaming free, not pursued, and coupled with a spike in new victims with less money for law enforcement is staggering to even consider!

“The bills further require a judge to release a defendant on a signed promise to appear, even if the pretrial services agency has failed to furnish a pretrial report to the judge indicating the likelihood the defendant will appear for future court proceedings or whether the defendant is a danger to public safety.”

Local Governments will instantly be Financially Strained!

“Shifting more than 300,000 defendants from privately funded bail to taxpayer-funded pretrial release programs will undoubtedly strain California’s already underfunded court system.

Penal Code §825 requires that defendants in custody be arraigned in court within 48 hours of arrest. Since these bills repeal the bail schedule, the courts, and district attorney and public defender offices, will have to deal with 300,000 additional arraignments within 48 hours of arrest.”

The cost to fund Hertzberg’s and Bonta’s bills started at One Billion and now with some estimates expanding the estimated annual cost to 3.78 Billion that California Taxpayers and new victims of crime will have to pay for.  Since there is no machine to collect the revenues of course taxes will have to be raised—again.

In short, new victims will have to pay for the Hertzberg – Bonta get out of jail free and unsupervised wave of fugitives who will not be pursued because The Bail Industry will not be involved if the Hertzberg – Bonta plan goes through; there can be no compromise or negotiation with Pro-Criminal/Anti-Victim ideologues and with one leaning pro-communist.

“The bills’ authors ignore the fact that judges hold hearings after arraignment of a defendant which includes sworn testimony, oral arguments by prosecution and defense attorney and judicial fact-finding on whether a defendant should be released without bail (i.e., on his or her own recognizance).

No new bureaucracy must be created (as the authors would do) for judges to be such fact-finders. These bills demonstrate lack of fundamental knowledge of our criminal justice courts and existing practices.”

Hertzberg – Bonta Falsehoods or Ignorance?

They cannot have it both ways.

“The majority of people in jail, pending trial, are in jail because of non-financial reasons. They are either serving a sentence on another case, subject to a probation or parole violation or facing an immigration or arrest warrant retention.

In a 2012 study of the Los Angeles County jail system by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU found that 87 percent of individuals who were in jail pending trial and unable to be released on bail were due to ‘non-financial holds.”’

“Because this is an unfunded mandate, the pretrial services agency will suppress funding for other county programs and agencies like the district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, the sheriff’s office and mental health services.

More Taxes – More Fugitives – More Victims

“Recently, New Jersey adopted a similar bail program, and its three-month old program is already estimated to cost over $450 million. AB42 and SB10 are based on the District of Columbia pretrial release system, which costs $65.2 million a year. It is important to note that New Jersey has a quarter of California’s population (39 million) and the population of D.C. is only 670,000 people. If the D.C. system were used to serve California’s population it would cost $3.78 billion per year.

In addition to the cost associated with running a seven-day-a-week ‘pretrial system,’ there is also the cost of monitoring hundreds of thousands of defendants who will be released onto the streets, the cost to the courts when a defendant fails to appear, and the cost of finding and arresting those who fail to appear.

A University of Texas study found the cost to the courts of each failure to appear in Dallas County was $1,775.00. (Morris, Robert G., ‘Pretrial Release Mechanisms in Dallas County, Texas: Differences in Failure to Appear, Recidivism/Pretrial Misconduct, and Associated Costs of FTA,” The University of Texas at Dallas (2013), p. 2-3).

The California legislation's sponsors claim that ‘[t]he savings from holding fewer people in jail would more than cover the cost’ of their proposed ‘pretrial service agency’; however, the savings are based on an erroneous assumption that 63 percent of defendants are in jail because they cannot afford bail.”

“In reality, most of these pretrial defendants are not eligible for bail or these bills' pretrial release programs because they have ‘holds’ from other agencies or are serving a sentence for a previous conviction. The true number of pretrial defendants eligible for pretrial release is closer to 13 percent, according to the 2012 American Civil Liberties Union study of the Los Angeles County Jail system.

Many such defendants are released through the current bail system. Therefore, the authors' claimed savings will not materialize, but the state and counties will be stuck with the high new costs of implementing their legislation.”

AB42 and SB10 are Unconstitutional!

(Cal. Const., art. I, §§12, 28, subd. (e)

“These bills violate the defendant’s right to bail by sufficient sureties, which, as noted above, is guaranteed by the California Constitution. Bail by sufficient sureties means a defendant must have the option to secure release through a bail bond posted by a commercial surety.

Several other high courts have considered identical phrasing in their state constitutions and have reached the same conclusion. State v. Barton 181 Wn.2d 148 (2014); State ex rel. Sylvester v. Neal, 140 Ohio St.3d 47, 2014-Ohio-2926; State v. Parker, 546 So.2d 186, 186 (La.1989); State v. Golden, 546 So.2d 501, 503 (La. Ct. App 1989); State v. Brooks, 604 N.W.2d 345, 352–53 (Minn.2000); State ex rel. Jones v. Hendon, 66 Ohio St.3d 115, 609 N.E.2d 541, 544 (1993)).

This legislation will force 300,000 defendants who can afford bail to sit in jail or to agree to onerous pretrial release conditions in order to be released.”

“Former United States Solicitor General Paul D. Clement commented last year on proposed changes to bail procedures in Maryland as follows:

‘[E]liminating bail as a meaningful option, as this bill does, and substituting an invasive pretrial program which includes conditions like mandatory drug testing, GPS monitoring and onerous reporting requirements, would raise serious constitutional concerns, which are exacerbated if violations of pretrial conditions would create additional criminal exposure for the accused.

The Ninth Circuit has held that, in some circumstances, such pretrial release conditions are unconstitutional. In United States v. Scott, 450 F.3d 863, 874 (9th Cir. 2005), the defendant agreed to submit to home searches and drug testing in order to obtain pretrial release. But when law enforcement conducted a home search and drug test of the defendant, the Ninth Circuit suppressed the results because these searches could not pass Fourth Amendment muster ‘under any of the three [relevant] approaches: consent, special needs or totality of the circumstances.’ Id.

As an individual merely accused of a crime and presumed innocent, the defendant maintained Fourth Amendment rights that the government could not violate. Even the defendant’s consent to the conditions of pretrial release could not render those conditions constitutionally legitimate because the government cannot impose ‘unconstitutional conditions’ in exchange for government benefits. Id. at 866 (citing Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994)).’”

(Comments on Proposed Changes to Maryland Bail Procedures (Dec. 21, 2016).)

The Hertzberg – Bonta Model is a Proven Failure

“According to ‘Not in it for Justice’ by Human Rights Watch, Alameda County's pretrial services unit does a very poor job of locating and rearresting defendants released on their own recognizance, meaning without bail.

Human Rights Watch analyzed Alameda County Jail data for 2014 and 2015. During that time, 12,166 defendants were released on bail from jail after being in for a median of one day, while the 3,848 defendants released on OR spent a median of four days in jail and Alameda County's pretrial services unit only had to process one-third the number of defendants as those released on bail.

This is the system AB42 and SB10 would institute in all of California’s 58 counties, where taxpayer-funded pretrial services will process one-third the number of defendants who spend four times longer in custody than under the current privately-funded bail system. It is irrational and dangerous.”

Some have presented a dual argument that The Bail Industry does not pump summary judgment monies into local economies, and that the judges have set the bail schedule too high.  The bail schedules by admission of government lawyers and even judges have been artificially increased precisely because of “We want the money” declaring judges and government lawyers!

One opinion is that The Bail Industry does not monitor or return clients who have forfeited bail bonds.  Again, this position is highly ignorant and out of touch based on hard evidence and multi-decade observations consistent with a very high number of personal bail apprehensions and knowledge of very active bounty hunters in California monitoring and doing the same.

Judge Kopp is on point in his opinion editorial based on my own training and experiences.

Quentin L. Kopp is a retired San Mateo Superior Court Judge who served 12 years in the California State Senate and 15 years on the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors. He tried criminal and civil cases from 1956 until 1998. He lives and practices law in San Francisco.

Just because a California politician sponsors a bill and the news media declares a newly introduced bill into law doesn't make it so!

“Every year more than 300,000 defendants choose to be released on bail in California. However, two bills seek to take this constitutional right away from defendants and replace it with an expensive and onerous pretrial release system.”

“The majority of people in jail, pending trial, are in jail because of non-financial reasons. They are either serving a sentence on another case, subject to a probation or parole violation or facing an immigration or arrest warrant retention.

In a 2012 study of the Los Angeles County jail system by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU found that 87 percent of individuals who were in jail pending trial and unable to be released on bail were due to ‘non-financial holds.”’

“These bills violate the defendant’s right to bail by sufficient sureties, which, as noted above, is guaranteed by the California Constitution. Bail by sufficient sureties means a defendant must have the option to secure release through a bail bond posted by a commercial surety.

This legislation will force 300,000 defendants who can afford bail to sit in jail or to agree to onerous pretrial release conditions in order to be released.”

Senator Bob Hertzberg SB 10 Bail Reform Act California

Hertzberg's SB 10 Pulled by Governor Brown late August 2017!