Title: STATE v. TORRES
Citation: 2004 OK 12, 87 P.3d 572
Docket Number: 
State: Oklahoma
Issuer: Oklahoma Supreme Court
Date: February 24, 2004

STATE v. TORRES Annotate this Case STATE v. TORRES 2004 OK 12 87 P.3d 572 Case Number: 96996 Decided: 02/24/2004 THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA STATE OF OKLAHOMA, Plaintiff/Appellee, v. PABLO TORRES, Defendant, and RANGER INSURANCE COMPANY, Intervenor/Appellant. ON CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS, DIVISION III ¶0 Thomas Bouldin, a licensed bondsman, and Ranger Insurance Company, a corporate surety, posted an appearance bond for Tulsa County felony defendant, Pablo Torres. Defendant failed to appear for trial and the district court ordered the bond forfeited. The bondsman was unable to return defendant to custody within the ninety- day period prescribed by statute for relief from the forfeiture order. THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED; THE TRIAL COURT'S ORDER IS AFFIRMED. J. Ted Bonham and Jeffrey D. Black, BONHAM, SWANK, COE & BLACK, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Appellant/Intervenor. Fred Morgan, Assistant District Attorney for Tulsa County, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Plaintiff/Appellee, the State of Oklahoma. OPALA, V.C.J. ¶1 The dispositive issues tendered on certiorari are: (1) Is appellant entitled to corrective relief from a bond forfeiture on grounds arising out of postjudgment events? and (2) Is there competent evidence in the appellate record to demonstrate that the trial court abused its discretion when it denied relief from the bond forfeiture? We answer both questions in the negative. I ANATOMY OF LITIGATION ¶2 On 11 September 2000 Pablo Torres (defendant) was charged in the District Court, Tulsa County, with the crime of rape by instrumentation. Thomas Bouldin, a licensed bondsman (bondsman), and Ranger Insurance Company (appellant), a corporate surety, executed a $50,000.00 bail bond to secure defendant's appearance. Defendant failed to appear for trial on 7 March 2001 and the trial court entered an order and judgment of bond forfeiture. The statutory notice of forfeiture was mailed within the time prescribed by statute.3 The bond forfeiture obligation came due on 21 June 2001.4 ¶3 Without having paid the forfeiture judgment and while defendant remained at large, bondsman moved on 27 August 2001 to set the forfeiture aside,5 arguing that a lack of diligence on the part of the Tulsa County District Attorney's office had prevented him from returning defendant to custody.6 Bondsman made the following allegations: (1) he had traced defendant to a city in Mexico, (2) he was told that to obtain the assistance of the Mexican government in apprehending defendant, U.S. officials in Mexico would have to receive an Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution (UFAP) warrant for defendant's arrest,7 (3) he received instructions from both state and federal prosecutors on the correct procedure for requesting a UFAP warrant, (4) as instructed, he sent to the Tulsa County District Attorney's office a letter dated 24 April 2001, asking state prosecutors to request a UFAP warrant for defendant's arrest from the United States Attorney's office, and (5) prosecutors in the Tulsa County District Attorney's office did not act on bondsman's request until 10 August 2001, well after the expiration of the ninety-day period in which a bondsman can return a defendant to custody and obtain statute-authorized vacation of a bond forfeiture.8 ¶4 A hearing on the motion to set aside the bond forfeiture was held on 14 September 2001. The motion was denied and the trial court ordered that the penalty on the bond be paid by the close of that day's business. ¶5 Appellant appealed, arguing that in refusing to vacate the bond forfeiture the trial judge abused the discretion granted him by the provisions of 59 O.S. 2001 §1332(C)(5)(b).9 The Court of Civil Appeals, Division No. 3 (COCA), disagreed and affirmed the trial court's order. Appellant then moved for rehearing, requesting not only a reexamination of the trial court's exercise of discretion, but also for the first time seeking review of the trial court's order in light of the provisions of 59 O.S. 2001 §1327(C), which call for the undertaking and sureties to be exonerated of further liability when the criminal proceeding is brought to a conclusion by the defendant's appearance, plea, and sentencing.10 The rehearing petition was denied and appellant sought certiorari. Although, like the COCA, we affirm today the trial court's ruling, we granted certiorari to provide, inter alia, guidance on an important point of procedure for securing exoneration where midappeal events give rise to a theory of relief not earlier available at nisi prius. We hence vacate the appellate court's opinion and affirm the trial court's order and judgment of forfeiture. II APPELLANT'S QUEST FOR CORRECTIVE RELIEF PURSUANT TO THE PROVISIONS OF ¶6 The provisions of 59 O.S. 2001 §1327(C) state that a bond forfeiture shall be set aside when a defendant appears before the court and enters a plea, is sentenced, or is granted a deferred sentence.11 After the COCA denied appellant the corrective relief it sought, appellant moved for rehearing and for the first time raised §1327(C) as a ground for reversal of the trial court's order. In support of the rehearing petition, appellant filed an amended designation of record and attached to its rehearing plea a copy of the updated appearance docket from defendant's criminal case. The COCA struck the attempted amendment of the record and denied rehearing. According to the rejected documentation, defendant Torres was returned to the custody of Tulsa County authorities during the pendency of the appeal herein, pled guilty, and was sentenced. Appellant now seeks on certiorari to have this court apply §1327(C) based on the midappeal events described in appellant's failed supplementation of the appellate record. ¶7 Appellant's invocation of the provisions of §1327(C) raises an issue of public law that relates to the exoneration of appearance bonds. We granted certiorari to clarify, among other things, why we cannot address that issue. When a dispute presents a public-law controversy, we are generally free to grant corrective relief upon any applicable legal theory dispositive of the case and supported by the record.12 While under the more relaxed regime for appellate review of public-law disputes we are free to disregard sua sponte deficiencies in the theories pressed, we may not do the same for deficiencies in the record.13 Record support remains absolutely essential. We are unable to address issues clearly outside the record.14 ¶8 The trial court never had an opportunity to consider in this case whether appellant is entitled to relief under §1327(C). The events making that statute arguably applicable had not yet taken place when the nisi prius court issued its order here on review. Appellant would now like to bypass the normal fact-finding procedure and present evidence directly to this court. To this aberration we cannot accede.15 Our review must stand confined to that record which was made before the nisi prius court at the time of its decision now under scrutiny.16 Our cognizance of this case cannot be affected by midappeal proceedings before the trial court in defendant's criminal case. The fact that post-decisional events may arguably provide a basis for invoking a legal theory that was not available when the decision under review was issued simply is not grounds for supplementation of the appellate record before the COCA. ¶9 The remedy to be pursued under these circumstances was for appellant to seek in the trial court postjudgment relief affordable by multiple statutory proceedings.17 Had appellant chosen the correct course, we in all likelihood would have agreed to a stay of appellate proceedings pending the trial court's ruling.18 If appellant had met with an adverse ruling from the trial court, it could have appealed from that ruling and moved here to consolidate the two related appeals.19 Instead, appellant chose for the corrective relief it seeks here a fatally flawed procedural course.20 III STANDARD OF REVIEW ¶10 The sole contention tendered by appellant which is reviewable on certiorari is whether the trial court abused its discretion in denying bondsman's motion to set aside the bond forfeiture. The decision whether to vacate a bond forfeiture is reviewable by the standard of reasonable discretion. It will not be disturbed absent an abuse of discretion.21 We have characterized the abuse-of-discretion standard by a variety of similar expressions. We have said that discretion is abused when a trial court makes a clearly erroneous conclusion and judgment contrary to reason and evidence,22 when it exercises its discretion to an end or purpose not justified by, and clearly contrary to, reason and evidence,23 and when discretion is employed on untenable grounds or for untenable reasons, or where its exercise is manifestly unreasonable.24 IV APPELLANT FAILED TO INTRODUCE COMPETENT EVIDENCE AT THE TIME OF NISI PRIUS HEARING THAT IT WAS ENTITLED TO HAVE THE BOND FORFEITURE SET ASIDE; THERE IS HENCE NOTHING IN THE APPELLATE RECORD FROM WHICH THIS COURT CAN DETERMINE THAT THE TRIAL COURT ABUSED ITS DISCRETION IN DENYING APPELLANT THE RELIEF IT SOUGHT ¶11 The provisions of 59 O.S. 2001 §1332(C)(5)(b) invest the trial court with discretion to vacate a bond forfeiture where a bondsman demonstrates good cause for failing to return a defendant to custody.25 The burden to show facts warranting relief from a bail bond forfeiture rests on the party seeking such relief.26 Although the bondsman's motion presents in this case a facially plausible argument for §1332(C)(5)(b) relief, the appellate record is utterly devoid of competent evidence of either the bondsman's efforts to locate and return the defendant to custody or of the state's actions that were alleged to have hindered bondsman's efforts. ¶12 At the hearing on bondsman's motion, appellant's counsel provided for the nisi prius court a running narration of the facts supportive of the relief requested, but offered neither sworn testimony nor other evidence having probative value. Counsel's in-court description of the efforts made by bondsman to gain custody of defendant and of the conduct of the district attorney's office that allegedly hindered those efforts cannot serve as a substitute for legal proof. ¶13 Appellant designated for inclusion in the appellate record certain documents from the court file in defendant's criminal case. Again, none of these documents was introduced into evidence.27 No request was made by appellant for the trial court to take judicial notice of any of these documents and the trial judge did not indicate that he was taking judicial notice of any of them.28 As for this court, we cannot notice material which, though arguably available for notice by the trial court and designated for incorporation into the record on appeal, did not function below as proof of critical allegations. Moreover, to the extent that the court file's contents contain statements which pertain to matters in dispute, or which constitute hearsay, or which would otherwise be inadmissible in evidence, they would not have been proper subjects for judicial notice had appellant requested that the trial court take that action.29 ¶14 By force of law a presumption of correctness attaches to every ruling made by a trial court. ¶15 Even if we were to treat the documents included in the appellate record as effective evidence, we could not hold that the trial court abused its discretion in concluding that appellant failed to meet the requisite burden of proof. The official documents in the appellate record include the document charging defendant with a crime, defendant's appearance bond, the order and judgment of bond forfeiture, the bondsman's guarantee to pay reasonable transportation costs, ¶16 In addition to the official documents, the court file also contains copies of two letters. One letter, dated 30 April 2001, purports to be from the aunt of defendant's wife and is addressed to the bondsman. In it the aunt states that she has spoken by telephone to the defendant in Mexico. At best, this letter might be regarded as showing that sometime after the date the letter was written, the bondsman received information (of unknown reliability) that defendant was residing in a certain Mexican city. It does not provide evidence relating to the bondsman's efforts to return the defendant to custody nor of the district attorney's lack of cooperation in facilitating those efforts. ¶17 The other letter purports to be from the bondsman to the Tulsa County District Attorney. It is dated 24 April 2001. In it the author asks the state prosecutor to request a federal warrant for defendant's arrest. This letter is the only documentation in the appellate record of the bondsman's efforts to garner the assistance of the district attorney's office. Even if this letter had been properly offered and admitted into evidence, it would not have been sufficient to persuade us that the trial court erred in its assessment of the proof. ¶18 In short, the State of Oklahoma has a judicially decreed right to the proceeds of the bond forfeiture at issue. Appellant, who asserts that it has a statute-based defense to the state's demand for enforcement of that order, has the burden of showing that the occurrence of certain events has created an infirmity in the state's adjudicated claim. Appellant offered tantalizing suggestions regarding the existence of facts critical to its case, but failed to prove those facts by admissible proof. It would have been a simple matter to have done so. It is elementary that evidence must be offered and admitted at a hearing in which fact issues are in dispute. In sum, that which counsel desires to use as proof must be adduced in a proper manner in the adversarial proceedings conducted to resolve the disputed facts on the merits of a claim or defense. V THE COURT'S RESPONSE TO THE DISSENT'S CRITIQUE ¶19 The dissent would have us hold today that the discretion given a trial court to vacate a forfeiture order is abused and good cause for vacation is shown within the meaning of §1332(C)(5)(b) where (1) a bondsman takes all legal steps to return a defendant to custody and (2) the trial court makes inappropriate suggestions during a hearing that the bondsman could have resorted to illegal methods to obtain defendant's return. While we join with the dissent in disapproving of the trial judge's comments about bribing Mexican officials, we disagree that his comments signaled that the use of illegal means was the only way appellant could have demonstrated good cause. Moreover, even if his inappropriate comments had given this impression, they could not turn what is otherwise an insufficient showing of good cause for the forfeiture's vacation into a sufficient one. ¶20 The bondsman's role in the appearance bond process is to provide security for the appearance of the defendant as ordered by the court. ¶21 The court's first opportunity to construe the parameters of the discretion conferred upon the trial court by the 1995 amendment to §1332(C)(5) came in State v. Vaughn, (a) whether the defendant has been returned to custody and, if so, whether the bondsman's efforts assisted in the defendant's return; (b) the nature and extent of the bondsman's efforts to locate and return the defendant to custody; (c) the length of the delay caused by the defendant's non-appearance; (d) the cost and inconvenience to the government in regaining custody of the defendant; (e) the stage of the proceedings at the time of defendant's non-appearance; and (f) the public interest and necessity of effectuating defendant's appearance. We said in Vaughn that this list is illustrative and not exhaustive, that no single factor alone is determinative, and that the relative importance of each factor is for the trial judge to determine inasmuch as it may vary from case to case.42 In applying these factors, it must always be borne in mind that the burden of showing facts warranting relief from forfeiture is on the party seeking such relief.43 ¶22 In Vaughn, the evidence established that the bondsman had hired bounty hunters who conducted searches in three states and that the bondsman had expended approximately $50,000.00 trying to locate the defendant. The bondsman argued that this evidence established that he had exercised due diligence and that a showing of due diligence was sufficient to satisfy the good cause requirement of §1332(C)(5)(b). We rejected that argument, instead analyzing the evidence in light of all the factors outlined earlier in that opinion. ¶23 The dissenting members of the court would have us reverse the trial court's order based on what they consider sufficient credible evidence of one of the factors prescribed by Vaughn - that the bondsman exhausted all legal steps to locate and return the defendant to custody. We said in Vaughn that no single factor alone should be determinative. That principle clearly guided our decision in Vaughn, in which we held that efforts alone, even when substantial and costly, are not sufficient to justify reversal of the trial court's decision. The dissenters disapprove of the nature and scope of the proof we prescribed in Vaughn as necessary to establish good cause under the provisions of §1332(C)(5)(b) and would have us use the present case to overrule our earlier decision. We decline to do so and hence remain committed to and bound by the requirements for relief under §1332(C)(5)(b) as pronounced in Vaughn. ¶24 Piecing together the documents in the court file ¶25 Appellant alleges that the bondsman pursued his request for assistance on more than one occasion, but there is no record support for this contention. The district attorney's office did not admit to any specific conversations with the bondsman, but conceded only that it received a request for assistance. Appellant alleged that he contacted American and Mexican officials in his effort to determine the proper way to proceed in Mexico to apprehend defendant. Again, no record support for this allegation exists. Every allegation made by appellant in the motion to set aside the forfeiture or in oral argument cannot be taken as true in the absence of some form of proof simply because the allegation was not specifically contested by the district attorney's office. ¶26 The efforts made by the bondsman in this case with respect to which we can view at least some supporting documentation or with respect to which we have some admission from the district attorney's office do not compare to the nature and extent of the efforts the bondsman made in Vaughn, which we did not believe justified reversal of the trial court's decision in that case. Moreover, a recapitulation of the other factors enunciated in Vaughn fails to provide any alternative basis for holding that appellant met its burden of proof. ¶27 In conjunction with their rejection of Vaughn's multi-factor analysis, the dissenters justify their departure from that decision by pointing to the trial court's suggestion at the motion hearing that illegal measures to secure defendant's custody might have proved more fruitful than the legal route pursued by the bondsman. We detect here a concern that the judge may not have carefully and dispassionately examined the evidence. We have examined the trial court's order and see no indication that the he failed to consider that which appellant presented (regardless of its status as admissible forensic evidence) or that his decision rested on a conviction that only an illegal act would have been acceptable evidence of good cause. ¶28 We turn now briefly to the dissent's recitation of what "can be gleaned from statements and admission of counsel, the hearing transcript, comments of the trial judge and from the written order." The dissent lists four "facts" that it says fall into this category based on which it would hold that good cause has been shown. ¶29 As a preliminary matter, we cannot agree with the dissent that our jurisprudence sanctions the substitution of statements of counsel without qualification, a hearing transcript, comments of the trial judge, and the written order for actual forensic evidence. We agree that stipulations of fact and admissions may serve as evidentiary substitutes that dispense with the need for proof of the conceded facts, ¶30 The district attorney's office did not stipulate to any facts that would have established good cause under §1332(C)(5)(b). The dissent cites only a single, narrow admission by the district attorney's office -- that the bondsman made a request for help in obtaining a federal warrant and the district attorney's office acted on it. This admission is found in Schedule "A" of the district attorney's response to the Petition in Error. It states: After receiving information from the bondsman that the defendant had fled to Mexico the Tulsa County District Attorney requested that the United States Attorney file a federal charge of Uniform Flight to Avoid Prosecution which was filed." The assistant district attorney had not previously made this admission during oral argument nor did his appellate brief repeat it, but we agree that, having made it in his response to the Petition in Error, he is bound by it. Yet it admits nothing more than that the district attorney's office received information from the bondsman and, after receiving the information, acted on it. It neither states nor fairly implies that the district attorney' office was dilatory or in any way impeded the bondsman's efforts to return the defendant to custody. In order to determine that we would have to know much more than is contained in this meager admission. For example, we would have to know when the bondsman provided the information to the district attorney's office and when in relation to receiving the information the district attorney's office acted on it. From this admission we do not even know whether the district attorney's office received the bondsman's request in time to act on it before the ninety-day grace period expired, or whether the district attorney's office received more than a single request for assistance from the bondsman, or whether any of the Vaughn factors were met by the bondsman. ¶31 We turn now to discuss just a couple of the specific "facts" gleaned by the dissent and explain why we must remain unpersuaded that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to vacate the forfeiture order. The dissent states that the bondsman got notice of defendant's whereabouts from his children's great aunt. ¶32 The dissent finds that it was only after the bondsman learned of defendant's whereabouts from the great aunt's 30 April letter that he requested assistance from the district attorney's office. Yet the letter requesting assistance is dated prior to the letter from the children's great-aunt providing information on defendant's location. The facts as set out by the dissent simply do not hold together. Perhaps the bondsman submitted the request for assistance before he actually knew where the defendant was. If that is the case, then he would have had to have contacted the district attorney again in May, after receiving the great-aunt's letter, to provide the critical information to him, but we have absolutely no evidence that there was a contact in May. It certainly would have been in the bondsman's interest to provide this information to the district attorney, but we simply do not know from this record when he told the district attorney's office exactly where the defendant was. ¶33 Let us look at another problem with the dissent's proposed finding that the bondsman got notice of defendant's whereabouts from the children's great aunt. If that is true, then he determined defendant's location on or after 30 April 2001. Yet in the motion to set aside the bond forfeiture and again in appellant's brief on appeal, counsel states that the bondsman located the defendant within one week of his failure to appear. By our reckoning, that would be approximately 14 March 2001, six weeks before the great-aunt's letter was written. Adding still more confusion, appellant's counsel stated at the hearing that the bondsman learned of defendant's whereabouts from the great-aunt's letter of 30 April -- as the dissent agrees. We could speculate that what really happened is that the bondsman learned that defendant was in Mexico within a week of his non-appearance, but that he only learned his precise location from the 30 April letter. If that is the case, then we would point out the obvious -- that Mexico is a big country, and we do not know whether it would have been reasonable or even possible for the district attorney to request a federal warrant based on the bondsman's belief that the defendant was in Mexico without knowing where in Mexico he was. ¶34 These and other problems might have been resolved in appellant's favor had appellant simply offered evidence to prove its allegations. As we said earlier in this opinion, appellant presented a facially plausible argument for the forfeiture's vacation. We simply cannot agree with the dissent that sufficient facts can be gleaned from admissions and offhand comments to justify dispensing with formal proof and to conclude that the trial court's order resulted from abused discretion. VI SUMMARY ¶35 Appellant sought review of the trial court's denial of bondsman's motion to set aside a bond forfeiture. It raised an issue of public law which cannot be addressed because of a fatal procedural infirmity in its presentation before this court. Review also was sought of the trial court's exercise of discretion in refusing to vacate the bond forfeiture. From the record submitted for our review, we are unable to say that the trial court abused its discretion or that its order, which was not overcome by competent proof of any error in the proceeding, is not entitled to a presumption of correctness. ¶36 THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS' OPINION IS VACATED; THE TRIAL COURT'S ORDER IS AFFIRMED. ¶37 OPALA, V.C.J., LAVENDER, HARGRAVE, BOUDREAU and EDMONDSON, JJ., concur; ¶38 WATT, C.J., ¶39 HODGES, J., FOOT