The Professional Bondsmen of Texas- Blog

  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an opinion today in Cause No. PD-0018-23; Continential Heritage Insurance Company v. Texas; In the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to address court costs in bond forfeiture cases. The court made two important rulings: 1.     The State of Texas is exempt from paying certain filing fees.  Whichever fees the State is exempt from paying, then the bondsmen cannot be required to pay them once the case is over. 2.     If the bondsmen is exonerated on a bondforfeiture under article 22.13 (a) 1-4 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, then the State must pay the filing fees in that case. The case was remanded to the Court of Appeals to determine which court costs the State is exempt from paying. To read the opinion CLICK HERE . If you would like to know more information, including how this may impact bondsmen, seeking a refund from a county, or if you are a county official and would like to know how this might impact your County, consider coming to

On this episode of The Bail Post, we discuss two different counties approaches to federal bail litigation.  In both counties, the federal courts entered preliminary injunctions to fundamentally change local bail procedures.  In Schultz v. Alabama, the county appealed, refused to settle and fought the litigation every step of the way.  The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the preliminary injunction and returned control of bail back to the county.  In contrast, in O'Donnell v. Harris County, the county appealed and won only to have the trial court enter a new preliminary injunction.  It was appealed as well and the 5th Circuit stayed the 2nd preliminary injunction stating that there was a substantial likelihood that the judges would win again.  However, the case did not go forward because there was an election and new judges were elected who promised to resolve the litigation.  A settlement was entered that tied the hands of the judges going forward.   On this episode, we h

The 4 Phases of the ‘Spiral of Death’ Facing Our Nation’s Largest Cities by Ken W. Good Across America, some of our major metropolitan cities are facing a crisis created by their own politicians seemingly intent on destroying public safety, while chasing away both businesses and citizens. Unable to keep up with lost revenue, increasingly, we will see municipalities getting overstretched and facing collapse if course corrections are not made. This dire situation is analogous to the “death spiral” experienced by ant colonies. Well-known for their self-organizing structure, ants search for food by following the ant in front of it. This behavior also allows them to find their way back to their nests. Sometimes a slight deviation occurs, typically caused by an environmental trigger, and an ant mill forms. When this happens, a group of ants will be separated from the main foraging party. If they lose track of the group’s pheromone trail, they will default to following one another, forming a