Bail Bond Fairness Act Of 2007
Floor Speech
BAIL BOND FAIRNESS ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - June 25, 2007)
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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2286, the Bail Bond Fairness Act of 2007. The legislation was introduced by Representative Wexler and Representative Keller on May 10 of this year and largely mirrors several other bipartisan bills introduced in the last three Congresses.
Historically, bail has been issued for the sole purpose of ensuring a defendant's appearance in court as ordered. In recent years, however, Federal judges have ordered bail bonds forfeited even when the defendants, in fact, appear in court, but they have violated collateral conditions of pretrial release.
Although actual bail forfeitures of bonds for violating collateral conditions are rare, and one of the reasons is that bail bonds, in fact, are rare, one reason cited is that some Federal judges now allow defendants to deposit their own funds in amounts that would be equal to the premium of a commercial bond underwriter, making the commercial bond unnecessary. Even so, the practice of attaching ancillary conditions to the issuance of a bond has created a barrier to pretrial release, because the risk of bond forfeiture has forced many commercial bond underwriters to avoid the Federal system altogether.
We find that commercial bond underwriters will opt to offer their services to defendants in the State system where a risk of loss is lower because they only have to be concerned about the defendant's appearance, not his behavior, or where they also maintain that friends and family of defendants are reluctant to post a bond for defendants because they cannot risk their homes or life savings based on a person's behavior. They may be able to risk it assuming he will show up in court.
H.R. 2286 would return the use of bail bonds to the historic purpose of limiting a judge's authority to order a bond forfeited to a defendant's failure to appear physically in court. It is important to note that the bill does preserve a judge's authority to impose conditions of release and to revoke the pretrial release and order pretrial custody, should a defendant violate any conditions of pretrial release. But so long as a defendant actually appears in court, the bond should not be revoked.
I strongly urge my colleagues to support the bill.
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