Court Opinion

ID: 9461747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:23:45.055064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:14.694526
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
Rule 46(e), Fed.R.Crim.P., by mandating the forfeiture of the bond in the first instance, makes the bondsman an insurer of the appearance of the defendant at trial. This strict liability is made subject only to a broad discretion reposed in the trial judge to remit forfeiture on an affirmative showing that “justice does not require” its enforcement. On this record I cannot say that the judge’s discretion was abused, or that that discretion would be significantly informed by further proceedings upon remand.
At the hearing on the motion to set aside the forfeiture, there was no formal proffer of proof, but only a suggestion that the bail agency may have a voluntary practice of notifying the bondsman of the rearrest of his client.1 It was also suggested that the bondsman was not notified by the Clerk of the Court of the setting of the trial on July 17, 1974, although neither was there any claim in this regard, as there could not be, that the Clerk, having notified the defendant, was under any further obligation to notify the bondsman of this fact.2 The trial court, properly concerned about the problems involved in shifting from pro*1355fessional bondsmen to public officials the burden of keeping track of defendants out on bond, thereupon decided to deny the motion.
The court’s discretion does not seem to me to have been abused under these circumstances, nor would it be if it reached the same result after the bondsman were to testify on remand that he had some reason to hope that official personnel would always notify him of his client’s comings and goings.

. MR. GARBER: Your Honor, I believe it is — and I think Mr. Weinstein can indicate this, it has been — the policy, at least as far as he knows, in the Bail Agency, when a man has been rearrested to notify the bondsman of the rearrest.
THE COURT: It may be an act of courtesy, but they are not required to do it
MR. GARBER: No.

. The only other suggestion made to the District Court of a mitigating factor was counsel’s statement that appellant “tells me that he did take steps and he assisted in the apprehension of this man within five days.” For present purposes we may take this to be true, but it would not, in my judgment, demonstrate on this record an abuse of discretion.