Thursday, May 4, 2017

ABC Doesn't Even Know What Bail Is

So I'm perusing the Harris County memorandum and opinion in the federal case, and I see a footnote in which the court says, "Texas's scheme points up a flaw in the amicus brief filed by the American Bail Coalition [and others]. The brief consistently and ahistorically assumes that references to 'bail' always mean a secured money bail with a monetary payment required up front as a condition of release." That's "a-historically," as in, going against or ignorant of history.

Thats 's a pretty big flaw, because it means the bail insurance companies -- the group developing the strategy to keep money bail in America -- doesn't even know what bail is. This flaw is the basis for a lot of the bail insurance companies' flawed legal claims, by the way, and it's the same flaw advanced by the big time law firm they've hired to litigate these cases.

I've written about this many times before, and they've got no excuse because everything the court said about bail -- what it is and what it isn't -- has been spelled out in my papers. But they refuse to read my papers. I'll let you decide whether that's wise. As the federal court in Harris County said, bail is a mechanism of release. As my papers say, bail is a process of release. We have a thing called bail to release people, just as we have a thing called "no bail" to provide a way to detain them. It's really pretty simple.

Bail agents, the insurance companies are not only losing this thing for you, they're losing it without even bothering to figure out what they're even talking about.

One day, as you're turning off the lights one final time, you'll probably think to yourself, "I suppose before we just followed along with the insurance companies' lost cause, we should've  at least checked to see if they could correctly define the word bail."

Just in case, in my next blog I'll define the words "American" and "Coalition."