The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Up to thirty days after arraignment comes the pretrial hearing, at which the judge either dismisses the charges or else sends them on for trial. Has the defendant made bail yet? If not, and if they won’t O.R. him, then, innocent or guilty, he’ll keep sitting in a cell. (Gonzalez again: In a felony case you can spend three months in jail and three more months waiting for a speedy trial, although that’s the worst scenario.*) He’s likely lost his job by now, if he had one. He’s not paying rent. Innocent until proven guilty, we said, but think about that rent. Think about those sinister nights of decay. And do you remember those three minimum appearances for a misdemeanor? How about making just one? Plead guilty, and it’s over. Remember those five felony appearances? If you can’t bring yourself to plead guilty, at least agree to drug counseling—that’s almost as good as admitting you’re wrong! The prosecutor will like you better, too. By thus validating your own arrest, you’ve proved him wise and righteous.

  Well, the system is a little vindictive, Gonzalez agreed. It’s hard to dismiss a flawed case. Once you get wrapped up in the system, nobody wants to admit an error. And sometimes the system is just plain schizophrenic. For instance, take Department Eighteen. That’s misdemeanor domestic violence. If you plead not guilty, you can’t be released because you are deemed to be a threat to public safety. Bail’s generally set. If you plead guilty, you will probably be released immediately with a promise to attend counseling, even if you haven’t attended counseling before and you haven’t even seen a probation officer. By allowing that second option, aren’t we really saying, hey, we could really O.R. all these people? You’re innocent until proven guilty. The public safety thing is illusory.

  | 147 |

  A woman in an orange jumpsuit rubs her big, bewildered eyes. Her lawyer, a lady in tweed, lays a hand upon her arm. The woman in orange is led before the judge, expecting destiny, only to be told by the people: The deputy D.A. is on vacation and I don’t think he’s coming back until next month. —The woman does not understand. The people’s representative frowns at her and shakes her head. The accused felon clears her throat, craving to learn what will happen next, but she’s gently led toward the exit at stage left. The bailiff rattles his keys. He unlocks the door, which she enters, becoming a prisoner again, for how long nobody yet knows. But why on earth does she have a right to know? She’s but a detainee, poor and shadowy, like one of those Egyptians in the Book of Isaiah who find themselves forsaken by their idols. And I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard master; and a fierce king will rule over them.† She cannot be proven guilty until next month at the earliest. Might she live her life until then? Might she descend those whitestone steps of the Hall of Justice, cross Byrant Street, and then wander home with the sun warming her pallid skin? It depends on the vagaries of bail.

  I do think that it’s necessary for the system to make every effort possible to see that people are not unnecessarily inconvenienced, said Albert Locher, that supervisory deputy district attorney in Sacramento. —At the same time, he went on, the presumption of innocence is a presumption that attaches to a specific part of the proceedings, which is the trial process. But there are other parts of the process. Bail reflects not only the strength of the case but also the degree of danger. If you have a guy videotaped in an armed robbery with his fingerprints on the counter and the gun in his possession, you’re not going to find me or many other people wanting to let that guy out.

  And so the presumed robber does not get out, and I’m with the people on that one; I’m not sorry. But the big-eyed woman in orange does not get out, either. Right or wrong, who’s to say? I don’t know her. But what does innocent until proven guilty mean to you?

  The interminable pregnancy of justice continues. If a trial seems warranted, then the accused must stand for his second arraignment. There follows the trial itself, then the verdict, and then the sentencing. Another portion of somebody’s lifetime, converted into excrement, gets flushed down the toilet of a cell.

  | 148 |

  And now for the straight stuff, the vulgar poop: What impels the bondsman’s kindness? We said ten percent before, but did you truly lull yourself into equating simplicity with truth? —We’re supposed to charge a flat ten percent. —Thus Geri Campana, former flight attendant and school teacher, current owner-agent of Al Graf Bail Bonds. This friendly and cheerful Japanese-American woman had entered the business because her husband, a retired police officer now deceased, had suffered from back problems. A desk job being practical under such circumstances, they bought the business from Al.

  | 149 |

  In churches one sees altars, in low-class jungle whorehouses one finds girlie posters taped to the bamboo walls, and in bail-bonds establishments one discovers emblems of conformity with legal authority. Al Graf’s, for instance, sported the insigniae of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, the National Rifle Association, and even the American Gunsmiths’ Association, a worthy organization whose skills remain of use to shooters of all ethical persuasions. At Al Graf’s there stretched a glasstopped wooden counter with a couple of stools behind it where the bondsmen sat. This barrier reminded me of the discreet little walls and reefs in topless clubs, cliffs to keep excited clients away. Every bondsman I’ve ever talked to says that the customers are friendly beyond the point of regularity; but aren’t we allowed to imagine odd times when some ghost without collateral blows in, and, his demands unsatisfied, decides to haunt the place? They say that Leon Padilla, the Sacramento “bail bonds king,” has survived four murder attempts—but some or all of those might have come from rival bondsmen. Didn’t anybody at Al Graf’s keep a box of silver bullets behind that counter, just in case? —Mrs. Campana was so kind to me that I thought her capable of exorcising all monsters with her sweetness. (Actually, they’re all very nice, she said. Each defendant is very grateful. We get along very well on the street.) And Roger Adair said: We have a good idea what they’re about. If we have a bad feeling, we’ll just say we’re sorry, we’re unable to write this bond for you. There are plenty of other bondsmen in the phone book. They might give you a little huff and grief about not wanting to help ’em but that’s just a part of the business. It is very natural in life to want to make a profit, be it financial or otherwise—don’t honeybees profit when they build up a store of metabolized nectar? When one profits from other people’s desperation (which I as a journalist occasionally do), one may well be lubricating evil’s tracks. —But must that be? Why should Mrs. Campana put herself at financial risk for the sake of every accused stranger’s freedom? Doesn’t she deserve to flourish? Aren’t her customers pleased to escape or postpone their living death?

  Do you ever feel that bail costs too much? I asked her.

  Some families, she replied, well, they go overboard, which I think is wrong. They offer up what they can’t afford. We don’t wanna go after them for the money. If the guy skips, they would be hurt just as hard as we would be. We’re here to protect their interest as the indemnitor. So anybody who skips, we try to coax them back into the system. We take the friendly approach. I’ll call them and they’ll be like, oh, my God, I’ve blown it. What do I do now?

  (And Roger Adair said: Maybe five or ten percent are knuckleheads at most. People call and say, whoops, my car broke down. Yeah, right. And most of the skips, we get ’em cleared up before anything bad happens. Only two to three percent actually run, and we have our own bounty hunter.)

  When we take ‘em out of jail, said Al Graf, ninety-eight percent show up for trial. (Al, as his business card said, was the original “BONDSMAN WITH A HEART” and on that lemon-yellow card his telephone number had been inscribed in a ruby red heart.)

  Mrs. Campana explicated: If they do not show up, they come back and request to get back on the calendar. We’ve collateralized their bail, so . . .

  | 150 |

  I asked Matt Gonzalez: Would you say that bail bondsmen perform a service or would you call them vultures?

  I would think more on th
e service side.* However, what’s their risk?

  Well, Al Graf told me that ninety-eight percent of his clients don’t skip.

  He would know. In that case, maybe ten percent is a little steep.

  Reader, I repeat: How can one not wish upon every bail bondsman, as upon every other soul, riches? (I keep seeing more and more new bail bonds businesses across from the courthouse, said the bail commissioner. I have never seen one fail.) But I would prefer it if their services were more democratically bestowed. As I write this, I can see before me Strawberry’s sad and drunken face.

  | 151 |

  The public defender Daro Inouye told me that ninety-four percent of his clients were incarcerated simply because they could not make bail. When I first heard this, I couldn’t believe it.* I would have believed ten percent, or even thirty, but not almost all of them. Inouye went on to say that in the old days far more people were bailed. I asked what had happened. —This is one of the great mysteries, he laughed, spreading his arms.

  But it’s far more expensive to incarcerate them all! I said.

  Absolutely. Absolutely. But pretrial detention just points out the difference between rich and poor. And look. If you have x amount of people in the county jail, so the county gets sued by the feds for overcrowding, what’s going to happen? A new jail! The greatest thing in this state used to be the California higher education master plan. Three years ago, the amount we spent on education was for the first time surpassed by the amount spent on prisons. You build a prison, you have to fill it or they close you down . . . If I were a wealthy man, I’d invest in geriatrics. The biggest old-age facilities will be in prisons. The whole concept is fear. Build a prison and they will come.

  I thought for a while, then said: Why not create a state fund to pay for the supervision of poor people who can’t bail? Pay for ankle bracelets or bounty hunters or something. That’s got to be cheaper and kinder than letting them sit in jail.

  Lemme tell you, said Inouye a little vaguely. This has been tossed around in many jurisdictions as an adjunct to the O.R. And we do have an O.R. Project in San Francisco . . .

  Why don’t defendants get O.R.’d more often, aside from the financial incentive to fill prisons?

  Well, a judge might hesitate to O.R. a suspect because if he committed any crimes while he was out, the judge’s enemies would have ammunition against him in his next reelection campaign. Moreover, bondsmen sometimes support judges in their election campaigns. —He chuckled and then said: A judge who O.R.s people who’d otherwise be paying bail bondsmen might be less than popular!

  | 152 |

  Needless to say, the bondsmen express divergent views. Roger Adair, for instance, said: Your idea of a fund sounds nice in principle, but when it came out to the time and money actually needed, I don’t think it would be there.

  I knew that Adair was right, because it’s not so popular to spend money on poor people.

  And lemme tell you something about the skip rate on O.R., he went on. To be honest with you, they’ve got over ninety-five thousand active bench warrants in Sacramento city and county. Only three hundred and forty-two of those are for people out on bail.†

  That’s why I don’t recommend any kind of O.R. program. What’s more, we bail bondsmen with our own bounty hunters do go out and find our own people at our expense, so we save the taxpayers’ money.

  | 153 |

  If you extrapolate that out, laughed Daro in response, leaning back in the dark at the Inn Justice bar, his white shirt perfect against his white hair and handsome, florid face, well, that means those people never got in trouble again, since the system hasn’t found them, right? So they haven’t had an encounter with the law for seven years! So O.R. works! he chuckled. That statistic means we should shut down the prison system!

  | 154 |

  In Sacramento there is no bail commissioner at all, and in San Francisco the sherriff’s office had never heard of round-bespectacled, dark-moustached Commissioner Lam, who on an average day played God thirty-five times, all aside from his job presiding over drug court. I called superior court, where the clerks asked one another in bafflement: Would you know how to reach the bail commissioner? —Finally they referred me to the Office of Citizens’ Complaints, because “they know everything.” But they didn’t. In the end, Daro Inouye helped me interview him at the Inn Justice.

  Would you say you’re more on the public defender’s side or the D.A.’s side?

  Oh, I think I piss off both sides, he said.

  How fair would you say the bail system is in general?

  I acknowledge that it’s an unfair system, but I’m not sure that there’s anything better.

  And O.R. ? I asked him, because he reviewed all candidates for that avenue to liberty.

  My feeling on O.R. ? he said slowly. If you’re a person who has a stake in this, you’re gonna have to come back to the courthouse. The others, they don’t give a crap. They may commit the same offense again, sure. We case manage these guys. What else can we do? The fifteen minutes that somebody spends in court is nothing compared to the twenty-four hours he spends in the street. How important can the guy in the black robe be compared to the asshole who keeps chasin’ him in the Tenderloin?

  (Failure is a part of the whole cycle, Daro agreed. Otherwise you’re saying, you blew it, that’s it forever, you’re in jail.)

  How do you choose who stays and who goes?

  I look at the background to see if the person will come back and if he is a particular threat. Has he defaulted before? The first issue is community safety. Then comes the severity of the offense. Finally comes failure to appear. This has nothing to do with has he committed the crime or not, and so I don’t think it gets in the way of presumption of innocence.

  When I’d asked Geri Campana how she decided whom to bail, she’d replied: A lot of it is gut feeling. I can pick up the phone and know right away if it’s a good bail or a bad bail. And then a lot of it is the stability of them in the area—how long they work here, how many family members are in my office signing up for them, whether the family’s stable and the defendant has never failed to appear.

  So far, this sounded pretty much like Commissioner Lam’s answer. But then I inquired: What’s a bad bail? Somebody who’s going to skip?

  Mrs. Campana’s answer went to the heart of the matter: If we take good collateral, we don’t worry about that.

  | 155 |

  And so, should the collateral be safe and decent, our bondsman crosses the street, ascends those wide steps of the Hall of Justice, and makes a beeline for Room 201 to submit the double-stubbed bond papers (which come preprinted in varying ceiling amounts, just like travelers’ checks) through a circular opening, receiving a receipt in exchange, which at least is more than can be said for many other transactions involving criminality. Next, the bondsman must follow the arrow for the JAIL ELEVATOR. Ascend to the place of confinement, and you’ll find yourself within a narrow cage whose far wall contains a little window, the counterpart of the orifice in Room 201, where the bond is actually posted, words between bondsman and clerk crackling tinnily back and forth through the barrier, as if one of them were a prisoner and the other a visitor—but which is which? The atmosphere of the cage is sadness. Sorrow’s reek wafts in from the cells beyond. But it’s all to the good. No more than six hours after the bond has been posted, and usually sooner, the jailbird will fly free.

  Meanwhile, the next defendant is already slowly and sneeringly approaching the judge with a rolling gait, his hands in his pocket. He ignores the jingling of the bailiff’s keys. Ladies bustle back and forth with armloads of files. And his predecessor, the hangdog defendant, looks down as the bailiff unlocks the door to stage left, sending him back to limbo.

  Any call that we get, we do anything and everything in our power to help them get out, said Roger Adair. But you can only go so far. You can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat. And if they just can’t work with you, you tell ’em you’re sorry, maybe they can get thei
r bail reduced or plead out on their case or just get it taken it care of. But we do go to great lengths.

  | 156 |

  Mr. Adair had already admitted that he did not go to great lengths for defendants such as Strawberry, whose famous line I’ll be right back brought smiles to all the grizzled old drinkers’ faces as the new trick commenced his wait. Strawberry was off smoking crack, getting drunk, and engaging in other contract work. She might be back in an hour, or then again it might be a week. We’ve already agreed that her example remains, to use her own summation, irrelevant, the law having long since damned her beyond reach of any bail. —They take me and lock me up, she had fatalistically said. —But set that aside; one last time, let’s suppose her to be one of those near-virginal trick-turners still eligible for bail—in other words, not a parole violator but a doer of a shining misdemeanors. Now, in the bad old days of misdemeanors, a prostitute could expect to face five hundred dollars bail, which at ten percent to the bail bondsman (not Mr. Adair, obviously, but perhaps somebody akin to that tightly grinning fellow up in Spokane who accepted VCRs) required her to turn two extra tricks.* And, by the way, here’s an interesting axiom I heard at the public defender’s office: Only two kinds of defendants fight a misdemeanor charge: middle- class people, who have the time and money to be outraged, and crazy people. The others just plead guilty.* Nowadays, assuming that unlike Strawberry she didn’t have other outstanding warrants, or wasn’t violating parole by getting picked up, she could simply be O.R.’d.