By Justin George, The Baltimore Sun
A company that insures bail bonds is suing Maryland’s District Court for being too lenient on its own industry.
What gives?
Lexington National Insurance Corp. says the playing field on which it’s competing with rival companies is not level. The Cockeysville company alleges in a lawsuit filed last month that the state courts have thrown away as much as $3 million by defying state law and not making competitors pay up when defendants jump bail or miss their court dates.
Lexington National says in its lawsuit that the practice puts them “at a distinct competitive disadvantage” with noncompliant insurance companies because it regularly pays forfeited bail bond bills, as required by a 2011 law.
Representatives for the District Court and Chief Clerk Roberta L. Warnken, who is listed as a co-defendant, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The attorney general’s office, which is representing the courts, also declined to comment.
But in a February memo, District Court Chief Judge Ben C. Clyburn said corrective action was being taken to make sure clerks were following the law.
Lexington National Insurance insures bail bond businesses, which put up money for criminal defendants who can’t afford bail.
The bond amount, typically much less than the full bail amount, is returned to bail bonds agents once a defendant shows up for hearings. When they don’t, the bail bonds businesses are required to pay the full bail amount. That payment is often made by insurers such as Lexington.
But between Oct. 1, 2011, and May, Lexington National Insurance claims that District court clerks failed to make some companies pay for forfeited bonds. The suit says they either ignored and erased the amount owed when defendants finally showed up after a legal deadline had passed or they failed to enter judgments ordering insurance companies to pay at all.
“Other companies are getting away without paying because the Clerk failed to timely implement protocols or has consciously chosen not to enforce the law,” Lexington National president and CEO Brian Frank wrote in an email. “Lexington National was aware of the law from its enactment and we implemented policies and procedures to comply, and continue to comply, regardless of the Clerk’s inactions or failure to enforce.”
Last week at the Fairplex at Pomona, the Pomona Chamber of Commerce held a special luncheon to discuss the impact that Assembly Bill 109 (Governor Brown’s Criminal Justice Realignment Bill) has had on both public safety and the community. This event was open to the public and was the first of its kind, bringing together a wide range of concerned stakeholders including law enforcement, the judiciary, public safety advocates and the commercial bail industry. The luncheon included a panel discussion among several criminal justice experts:
For purposes of background, AB109 was created in response to a decision affirmed by the US Supreme Court regarding California’s legal requirement to reduce prison overcrowding to 110,000 inmates or face the wholesale early and unsupervised release of approximately 33,000 inmates. In a little over a year, realignment has transferred over 24,500 inmates from the state prison system down to the county jails. In this process, the state has provided counties with billions of dollars in funding to handle this unprecedented shift in prisoner responsibility. This important reduction will help California end current and avoid any future costly litigation as well as an expensive receivership. In the past, all inmates released from state prisons were supervised by the state parole system. Beginning on October 1, 2011, after serving their legally required state prison sentences, inmates with a current offense (unfortunately, this doesn’t take past offenses into consideration) that were identified in a “non-non-non” (non-violent, non-serious, non-sex offense) category were to be supervised by county probation as opposed to state probation. Moving forward all new convicted offenders falling into the “non-non-non” category will serve out their sentences in the county jail as opposed to state prison.
Each panel participant provided the over 80 attendees with interesting and informative information on the impacts of AB109. The general theme across all the panelists was that AB109 was having a significant negative impact on public safety in communities all over the state. At one point in the presentation, Lynne and Dwight Brown of APS showed mug shots and background profiles of several extremely dangerous individuals that had been released through AB109. While these individuals were deemed eligible for release through AB109 because of the non-non-non designation of their current conviction, their “full” backgrounds and profiles told a much different story. In fact, many of those released were anything but non-violent, and most experts would agree pose a significant threat to the communities in which they are released.
One of the most interesting presentations was given by the representative of the commercial bail bond industry, Eric Granof. Mr. Granof talked about the collateral impact that AB109 was having on the pretrial populations within the jails. County jails were designed to house defendants that were awaiting trial or those that had shorter sentences (typically 1 year or less). Under AB109, state prisoners are being transferred to county jails and in the process are taking up valuable space traditionally reserved for pretrial populations. In response to the influx of state prisoners, county jails are finding ways to release more and more pretrial defendants on their own recognizance and through taxpayer funded pretrial services programs than ever before.
It was at this point that Mr. Granof explained the role and effectiveness of the commercial 
The panel discussion ended with several questions from the audience and a final closing statement from the Executive Director of the Chamber, Frank Garcia. In summary, the general feeling by most attending the event was that the current solution that AB109 is providing is not acceptable when it comes to public safety. A solution is needed at all levels of the system…a solution that takes public safety into account first and foremost, and that ensures the proper amount of supervision and accountability for those that are released (whether that release is post-conviction or pretrial). According to event creator,