“Escape From Utah”
My partner and I wrote a $10,000 bond for a suspended license charge. The defendant worked at a factory, earning $17 per hour, and he had a wife that worked and children in school. They had arrived legally from Mexico 10 years earlier and had lived in southern California since then.
Everything looked good. They were long-time residents with stable, decent-paying jobs. We had no reason to believe the defendant wouldn’t fulfill his obligations to the court. On a typical suspended license charge on a bond this small in Los Angeles County, the defendant would need to serve maybe five days in jail and be done with his case. Therefore, we chose to write the bond with no collateral, based on their income from their respective jobs.
Imagine our surprise when the defendant failed to appear in court. After searching for him in Los Angeles, we uncovered a lead indicating he had moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. After we discovered his work location and home address in Utah, we decided it was time for a road trip.
I took my partner in my truck and we drove straight through 17 hours to Utah. When we arrived, we went to the defendant’s place of business, where his boss informed us he was out to lunch and would be back in another hour. We waited in the truck for the defendant to pull up, thinking this was going to be easy. After two hours we went back inside the defendant’s workplace. His boss said he had not returned and wasn’t sure where he was.
At that point, we decided to go to the defendant’s home. After a minute knocking on the door, we tried the door handle. It was open. The moment we stepped inside, it was obvious he had been preparing to leave. The dresser drawers were open, the medicine cabinet was open and there was a travel bag half packed on the bed. We realized he had been tipped off to our arrival.
We left his home and went back to his place of business, where his boss said he still hadn’t returned. After talking to a few people at his workplace, we learned that his best buddy called him and told him we were looking for him. We quickly left and went to his wife’s workplace, but she wasn’t there.
Stuck with no collateral, no cosigner, no defendant and no leads, we drove back to southern California. We had more than two months left before we had to pay off the bond to the court. After doing more investigative work, we found out through relatives, friends and other searches that the defendant had tried to leave with his family for Mexico and was arrested in El Centro, California. He had a statewide warrant connected to his license plate number. He was eventually returned to Los Angeles for his court hearing, where he received six months of jail time, and our bond was exonerated.
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