https://imgur.com/gallery/97Mc5xl
I don’t understand, also never been arrested/ bonded/arraigned before
In: 5
So, let’s say you get arrested and charged and your bond is set at $10,000. That means your options are to either give the court $10,000 and get to go out until your trial date, or you have to sit in jail until your trial. The $10,000 is Essentially a “I promise I’ll come back” payment. Because when you do show back up for your court date you get the money back from the court.
But, not many people have $10,000 cash lying around, so they use a Bonds company. Basically you sign an agreement with a company saying if they pay your bond for you, when you go to court they’ll get their money back and you’ll pay them back some extra.
This is how the systems normally operates, through established bond companies.
Not getting a bind means none of the bond companies actually trust you enough to show up in your court date and/or pay them back the extra.
So not being able to secure a bind essentially means those companies trust you less than the average criminals they deal with on a daily basis.
The US court system has a bond system to guarantee that a person does something (show up in court, pay damages, etc.) Basically, the person gives a lot of money to the court and the court gives the money back when the person does what they are supposed to do.
It’s a financial guarantee they will do it.
However, poor people generally don’t have huge stacks of cash they can give to the court as a guarantee. So, poor people go to a bail company and that company puts up the cash for a fee. But the contract stipulates the bail company can literally hunt you down physically and drag you to court if you don’t do what the court says. The bail company is financially incentived to drag the person back to court so they can get their bail money back. A bail company may deny a person a bond if the bail company feels the person isn’t going to do what the court asks. It’s not worth the cost and effort to drag them back to court.
In this particular case, it seems Trump is appealing his civil rape damages payment. He has already been ordered to pay damages. While he appeals, the court asks him to pay an “appeal bond” which is a cash guarantee that he will pay if he loses his appeal. Rather than going to a bail company, he is just asking to give the court a cash guarantee at an amount slightly larger than the amount of cash he owes the victim. If he fails to show up at appeals court, the court can just give the cash guarantee to the victim and the victim will get paid the amount she is owed. This is fine for the victim (she gets paid if Trump doesn’t show up) and this is better for Trump than using a bail company as he doesn’t have to pay the bail company fee and he doesn’t have to sign a contract saying a bounty hunter can drag him back to court.
I don’t know the details of this particular case but it doesn’t seem Trump was denied anything. His lawyers appear to be requesting an alternative financial guarantee to an appeal bond. The way the letter is written, it appears anyone with enough cash in this situation can request that.
A bond is a loan of sorts. It is used in legal situations as a payment to guarantee something. If you fail to do the thing being guaranteed, you lose the money (it is the cost for failure). Kind of like a down payment, in a way, but the bond is borrowed from someone to make the down-payment.
When you promise to pay some amount to a bondsman (secure a bond, a loan), it means that the bondsman is putting up the money for the guarantee. You might be putting up only 10% to the bondsman (price of the loan). If YOU fail to do the thing being guaranteed, the BONDSMAN loses the money. They have to come after you in civil court to get their money back if you do not pay them what they just spent on your behalf. That is both a huge pain in the tail and costly, likely time-consuming (big delays to get paid if get paid at all), and they still might not get any money.
Some folks are so terrible at paying money that the owe, and are so unreliable that no one trusts them to keep the guarantee or actually pay what they owe, so no one will take on the risk of lending a large amount of money in their behalf. Of course, sometimes the person cannot even find that 10% payment (or whatever it is) for the bond, so they get no bond. Either case, the person cannot secure a bond. Either have to find the total amount somehow else, or forfeit their own freedom as guarantee to do the thing.
In Trump’s lawsuit problem, he has to pay the judgement NOW whether or not he gets it changed on appeal. They will give him back anything that turns out to be too much. He has a debt he has to pay NOW. Apparently he is seen as so unreliable that no one will front him the money. They worry they won’t ever get paid. I cannot imagine why.
>what does it mean “one cannot secure a bond?”
Where does it say that in there?
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