Bail bondsmen accused of exploitation

Most bail bond agents make it their business to get their clients to court. But when Ronald Egana showed up at the criminal courthouse in New Orleans, he was surprised to find that his bondsman wanted to stop him.

A bounty hunter was waiting at the courthouse metal detector to intercept Egana and haul him to the bond company office, he said. The reason: The bondsman wanted to get paid.

Egana ended up in handcuffs, missing his court appearance while the agency got his mother on the phone and demanded more than $1,500 in overdue payments, according to a lawsuit. It was not the first time Egana had been held captive by the bond company, he said, nor would it be the last.

As commercial bail has grown into a $2 billion industry, bond agents have become the payday lenders of the criminal justice world, offering quick relief to desperate customers at high prices. When clients like Egana cannot afford to pay the bond company’s fee to get them out, bond agents simply loan them the money, allowing them to go on a payment plan.

But bondsmen have extraordinary powers that most lenders do not. They are supposed to return their clients to jail if they skip court or do something illegal. But some states give them broad latitude to arrest their clients for any reason — or none at all. A credit card company cannot jail someone for missing a payment. A bondsman, in many instances, can.

“It’s a consumer protection issue,” said Judge Lee V. Coffee, a criminal court judge in Memphis, Tenn. Before recent changes to the rules there, he said, defendants frequently complained of shakedowns in which bondsmen demanded extra payments. “They’re living under a constant daily threat that ‘if you don’t bring more money, we’re going to put you in jail.’ ” The pressure, the judge said, “would actually encourage people to go out and commit more crimes.”

Some bail bond practices have drawn the ire of judges who complain that payment plans are too lenient on people accused of serious crimes, allowing them to get out for just a few hundred dollars or even no money down. Those judges say it should be more difficult for the accused to walk free.

Other judges see some bondsmen as trampling the rights of defendants. One judge in Lafayette, La., Jules Edwards III, held in contempt two bondsmen, who were brothers, for intercepting a defendant on his way to court and sending him, instead, to jail.

The judge said the commercial bail industry had put its financial interests above justice and public safety. “If he’s not in compliance with the contract, sue him. How do you get to snatch his body and hold him hostage?” Edwards said in a phone interview.

He added that defendants do not have to go with their bondsmen unless there is a warrant out for their arrest, but many of them do not know that.

In both Egana’s case and this one, the bondsmen would not have been on the hook for the defendants’ failure to appear, because they diverted the defendants from court dates for unrelated cases, not the ones for which they had bailed them out.

The bond agency, Blair’s Bail Bonds, stopped Egana, who had prior felony convictions, from going to court on charges of fleeing an officer, but had bailed him out in June 2016 after he was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, a firearm and stolen property.

Not only could Egana not afford the full bail, he could not afford the fee, $3,275. He arranged to pay it in installments. After his release, he said, Blair’s informed him that on top of the premium, he would have to pay $10 a day for an ankle monitor, though the judge had not ordered one. Guilty or innocent, Egana would never see any of that money again. Blair’s has denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

Some customers feel they have no choice but to pay bond agents’ fees — no matter how outrageous they seem. When a home health care aide wanted to bail her son out of Rikers Island in New York City, she was charged $1,000 to have a courier walk her money a few blocks to the courthouse.

A woman in Des Moines, Iowa, woke one morning to find that her 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix had been repossessed during the night. Had she put up her car as collateral in a typical loan, she would have been notified that she had fallen behind and given 20 days to pay.

But instead, the car was collateral for a bail bond for her child’s father. She owed $700 to the bail agents.

They not only took the car, but turned the father over to the jail. Ultimately the misdemeanor assault charges against him were dismissed.