Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds on the Bailing Process

When a person is arrested on suspicion of a crime, he is taken to jail by law enforcement agents. During this process, the person will have a mug shot taken, then will be fingerprinted, and asked for a statement, while law enforcement performs a background and checks for additional warrants in other jurisdictions. While awaiting his court appearance, the defendant is set with a bail amount, which must be paid in order for the person to get out of jail. If a person is unable to pay the bail amount, they can hire a company such as Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds, to post the bail amount.

The bail bond is a surety bond that is paid to the court as insurance that the person will come to his court hearing. Simply putted, a bail bond, (money) is the means of guaranteeing the appearance of an accused defendant to all their court appearances. Judges issue three main types of bonds that a bond agency such as Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds deals with. Cash bonds require payment upfront and are one of the most effective for enticing a suspect to show up for court. Surety bonds require the bond agent to guarantee payment if the accused flees. Property bonds are similar to sureties, but the court puts an actual lien on property.

Choosing an agency such as Marvin Morgan can make this process easier. Their bail bondsmen are experienced and know how the legal system works. Furthermore, they will explain everything thoroughly and help you get through this difficult time. From the moment you call Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds NYC, they’ll start the process over the phone, and gather information on where the person is being held. Next, the Marvin bondsmen will get all of the details from the jail concerning your case. This includes any issues that may further complicate the release, like additional charges, outstanding warrants or holds. From start to finish, Marvin Morgan’s bondsmen can complete the entire process in a couple of hours.

If a defendant fails to appear before the court, the law considers him a fugitive. Thus Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds agency has to hunt down the fugitive or reimburse the court for the bond amount. Usually bond agents have a security fund for such situations, because the companies that insure bail bondsmen require it. Marvin Mail Bond agents take most of the risk for bonds on fugitives because insurers usually pay only if the bondsman cannot cover the bond. If Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds agency cannot find the suspect, it has to go after the assets of the fugitive or whoever requested the bond.

The National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents advises contracting a bounty hunter to return an accused for trial, unless you want to hunt fugitives yourself.

Marvins discussions: Bail Vs Bonds

Once a person is in police custody and is charged with an alleged offense, he or she may be able to get out of jail by posting bail or obtaining a bond. Bail is used to guarantee, to the degree possible, that the defendant will show for all court hearings. A judge determines the amount of bail based on several factors such as the seriousness of the crime, the character of the defendant, and the criminal history of the defendant among other considerations. Basically, the judge will weigh a combination of factors that suggest either that a defendant is likely or unlikely to return to court and face trial if they are granted bail.

So we already determined that bail is the money a defendant must pay in order to get out of jail. Bail bond on the other hand is posted on a defendant’s behalf, usually by a bail bond company such as Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds, in order to secure the arrestee’s release. Normally, bail shouldn’t be higher than the amount believed to be necessary to guarantee the defendant's later appearance in court.

The bail bond is a contract between the agency in this case Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds, the court, and the person posting the bail. Bail agent is the person responsible for the defendant’s showing up for all court appearances. Money is required by the court as a guarantee to keep the defendant from fleeing once released. The bail agent gets a portion of the bond as their fee if the defendant does not show up for court, any money or collateral can be forfeited as a penalty.

The amount of money required by the court as a bail depends on the severity of the crime and the degree of a flight risk for the defendant. Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds and the bail agent respectively, get a percentage of the bail amount decided by the judge for that particular defendant.

If the arrestee fails to appear on all hearings scheduled, and both bail agent and the co-signer are unable to locate the defendant, the co-signer becomes responsible for the full amount of the bail. Once the defendant is located and arrested by the Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds agents, the co-signer also gets responsible for all of the agent's expenses related to finding the defendant.

Marvin Morgan: Bail bonds agents

Many arrestees lack the financial power to post their own bail. To get released from jail, they often have no choice but to contract a commercial bond agent from a professional company such as Marvin Morgan's Bail Bonds Company, to act as surety for the bond. After collecting a nonrefundable fee of 10 to 20 percent from the defendant or his family or friends, the agents can immediately post bail. In case the defendant cannot afford to pay the agent as security, the agent can obtain other collateral, such as jewelry, securities, or something else of value. The bail bond agent in return agrees to pay the remaining amount to the court if the defendant fails to appear.

In the U.S. alone, there are around 14,000 bond agents, working in companies like Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds. In most states, bond agents need to be licensed. In order to obtain license, the applicants must meet certain educational requirements. This giver potential bail bondsman appointed by an insurance company, the right to write bail bonds.

In case a defendant fails to appear to trial, and cannot be located, the bail agent is responsible for the bond payment. The bondsmen from Marvin's Bail Bonds, as well as many others, have arrangements with local courts, under which they agree to post a bond. These bonds free the bondsman from depositing cash or property every time they take on a new client. If any of a bondsman's clients fail to appear at trial, the court is eligible to keep the bond.

In order to ensure a defendant's appearance in court, bail bond agents sometimes check defendants by telephone or in person, or they can even monitor the defendant in some other way. In rare cases, a bail bondsperson may place a guard on the defendant. If the agent concludes that the defendant is not likely to fulfill his obligations of the bond, then he is not obligated to post bail.

Some states have outlawed the practice of posting bond for profit. Other jurisdictions allow commercial bail on a limited basis.

The Origins of the Bail System in the U.S.

When discussing the U.S bail system, it is necessary that we first look into the English Bill of Rights passed in 1689, because the American bail law is modeled after the system developed in England. In medieval England, arrested criminal would do anything to not show up in court, as the penalties were too harsh. Because of that it was really difficult for local sheriffs to keep them in jail until the appointed court time. The first known instances of setting a bail amount and releasing a defendant after posting bail by judges or than called magistrates were found in England during the Middle Ages, inform the experts from Marvin's Bail Bonds. The Habeas Corpus Act was passed by the English Parliament in 1677, and within the act’s provisions it was stated that defendants charged with felony or misdemeanor crimes would be eligible for posting bail through a bail bondsman or bail agent. 

In the United States, bondsmen and agencies like Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds have been around since the country’s founding. Of course, over the years the laws concerning bail bonds have been changed and refined. Setting fair amounts according to the crime that has been charged has often been addressed with these laws changes. Some specific practices according to individual state laws have also been changed, but the basic concept has remained quite the same, lists Marvin Morgan. When the concept first took shape it was meant to give freedom, rather than detain a person, which implies that bail hasn’t always been a mechanism for locking people up.

But as bail evolved in America, it became less about keeping people out of jail, and more about trapping doors for those who cannot afford to pay it. Unable to meet bail, poor people were sitting in jail for months, often accused for charges that were eventually dropped. Jails were not only overcrowded, but filled with a disproportionate number of poor people. According to Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds the bail system remained mostly unchanged until 1966, when the groundbreaking Bail Reform Act was passed by the Congress, and which was meant to address the inequality and classism that existed in the bail system.

Bail Bonds - Determining Bail

Finding yourself behind bars is probably a scenario that nobody has envisioned for himself, but life often brings us unpredictable situations, and getting arrested can be one of them. When a person is accused of crime, being booked at the local police station is the first step of the process. Here policeman take the defendant’s information such as name, date of birth, address, job, previous criminal history, and gather information about the alleged crime that he or she is accused of. As a professional bail bond company, Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds serves the needs of New York residents, and offers them their expertise and assistance in such difficult times. In order for a defendant to be released, and wait for his court trial on freedom, the bail amount set by the judge needs to be posted. When determining bail amounts, there are several key factors that judges normally take into consideration when setting bail.

A person’s history of showing up for past court appearances, family and ties to the community, whether the defendant poses risk to the society or is considered a flight risk, are just some of the factors that the judge takes into account for determining bail. The severity of the crime is also a key factor, and as we find out from Marvin's Bail Bonds, within the U.S.A. most jurisdictions have bail schedules with standard bail amounts. In cases of more serious crime, bail may be waived altogether. There are five different types of bail, although some are more common and used more frequently.

When cash bail is set by the judge, the defendant needs to pay the full amount of bail in cash. In some cases, the court may accept credit cards or eve checks. Surety bond or also known as bail bond, which is Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds' area of business, can be used for any amount of bail, and it is especially useful when the defendant can’t afford to pay his or her bail. With surety or bail bonds, a friend or relative of the accused contacts a bail agency such as Marvin Morgan, the bail bondsman. There is also release on citation, or better known as cite out, release on own personal recognizance, and property bond.

Marvin's Bail Bonds: The Bias Nature of Bail

In the United States the bail system has a particular bias against the poor. As an economic tool, bail furthers the progress of having two separate justice systems for those that are well-off and those who are lacking sufficient financial resources and can’t afford to pay bail. Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds is a professional bailing agency serving the needs of New Yorkers.

According to a report issued by the National Institute of Corrections, an agency of the Department of Justice, the United States leads the world in the number of pretrial detainees. Currently, over two thirds of America’s inmates and detainees are not convicted criminals, but people those awaiting trial. A significant number of these people are behinds bars only because they can’t afford to bail. As Marvin Morgan's Bail Bonds agents explain, bail is the amount of money requested to be paid, in order to secure the accused person’s return to trial. But when a person fails to do that, simply because he can’t afford to pay bail, normally it results in imprisonment, which is kind of illogical for a justice system that embraces and is built around the term “innocent until proven guilty”.

It is estimated that on any given day around half a million people are locked up in the country’s jails, just because they don’t have enough financial resources to pay bail. In fact, Marvin Morgan Bail Bonds reveal that in the history of New Jersey, in one day alone, there are more than 1,500 defendants deprived of their freedom, separated from their families and normal life, locked behind bars because they could not come up with $2,000 or less. As a result of that the correctional systems are swamped with people who simply can’t afford to pay the bail, not because they refuse to pay.

Yet judges and other law enforcing entities continue to rely on money bail, knowing it is flawed. For them bail is a crucial tool and the single most reliable assurance that a person will show up at trial. Marvin Morgan strives to educate people on the bail bonds topic, and the issues that come with it, by offering free advice and guide to those interested.