I saw your recent post about Jay Justice and his $5,000 bond. I also saw your correction that it was Virgil Bain who set the bond.
Virgil Bain was appointed by the county commissioners to do arraignments at the jail. This was a created position, not an elected one. His title is “associate criminal court judge.” The county directory doesn’t list an email, only a phone number. Can’t be too available to the citizens eh? That phone number, located on the county website, is 254-757-5004.
Before the county created a job and picked someone to do it, the local JPs (Justice of the Peace) took turns doing a week of arraignments at the jail. Then one by one they decided that they just weren’t gonna do that anymore. No one really made a stink, the county just decided to use some of those tax dollars they love to give to their buddies to create a position for another buddy.
Virgil had once remarked to jail staff that his job is to set bonds low enough so that people can bond out.
In order to understand why the county wants to make sure almost all the criminals can make bond, you have to understand a bit about how bond works and how the local bail bond industry works.
When a person is arrested, they go to jail and see a judge who will arraign them and set a bond for the crime. Let’s say you got popped for DWI. A judge might set your bond at $2000. Now if you can post the full $2000, you get all that money back when you show up for your court dates.
Most people don’t have thousands of dollars laying around, so they instead turn to a bail bondsman, who will post the bond on their behalf in exchange for a percentage (usually 10%). The bail bondsman gets the full $2000 back when you show up to court and keeps your $200 for their trouble. Now through some financial trickery that I won’t go into, it’s not like the bondsman is actually putting down $2000 cash or anything, but that’s a different topic.
So if you can’t bond out of jail, that bondsman doesn’t get to make his $200. Say the judge set your DWI at $10,000 and you don’t have the means to make arrangements to pay the $1,000 to the bondsman. They’re super helpful with payments/arrangements to get your money. In that case, you sit in jail and the bondsman doesn’t make his money.
If a judge starts cutting into their bottom line like that, then they make a phone call or sit down to lunch with one of their buddies (county commissioners, people with some stroke in the local republican party.) They express their displeasure at the judge, and since they make donations to various people, those people tend to listen.
So now the judge is getting a phone call suggesting that they may want to start lowering those bonds. In theory that judge doesn’t have to listen. However, for JPs, they may suddenly find themselves facing a primary challenger in the next election. For an appointed judge, they may find that the county budget no longer has room for their position. You also have to realize, these people did not get into the positions they are for their morals. Their spines tend to have some flexibility and are more along the lines of “go along to get along.”
Occasionally this system works in the opposite direction. Piss the right person off and get arrested, you might find your bond significantly higher than someone who committed the same offense on the same night.
So the next time you see some ridiculously low bond on a crime, just remember that they’re looking out for those poor ole bondsman who are just trying to make an honest living. We can’t have judges that actually look at a person’s criminal history and the crime itself and set an appropriate bond.
If you ever end up having far too much time on your hands, just looking into/paying attention to how low all these bonds get set at. Especially with ole “Back on the Street” Bain doing the setting.
