Court Opinion

ID: 9494756
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:45:37.908071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:35.742775
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree that forfeiture was mandatory. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to remit the forfeiture in its entirety. I disagree, though, on remission in part. There was no good reason to forfeit the entire amount of the bond. The district court did not give any reason at all for why the whole bond, not just part, should have been forfeited. The district court focused entirely on whether there should be a forfeiture, not on how much. Failure to remit in part was an abuse of discretion.
The $100,000 in security was probably designed to cover the expense of fetching Nguyen if he fled to a foreign country or otherwise put the government to great expense. But all Nguyen did was fail to show up at the marshal’s office, and put the government to the minimal burden of telephoning and driving around town to get him. A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money for doing nothing more than looking around town for less than three weeks before picking Nguyen up at his place of business and giving him a ride in a government car. Nguyen’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law will probably both lose their homes because of the forfeiture. They are not the criminals in this case. It is tragic when people post bail for a family member in trouble, only to be ruined for their kindness when their kin jumps bail. Today’s decision may affect a lot of common situations, as when people’s children are arrested for drug crimes or their husbands or wives for drunk driving, embezzlement, or tax offenses. If bail is set high enough to catch an international fugitive, but all that happens is that the criminal fails to show up (the majority opinion says Nguyen “essentially thumbed his nose” but to me it looks more like panic about going to jail than insouciance) and is easily and locally caught, there is no good reason to forfeit so large an amount.
The district court had discretion to set aside the forfeiture or remit judgment on the forfeiture “in whole or in part” “if it otherwise appears that justice does not require the forfeiture.”1 What “justice requires” depends on the purpose of bail bonds. The purpose of bail bonds is to make sure defendants show up for court,2 not to punish them or their families if they don’t. Here, the record supports the district court’s determination that Nguyen willfully failed to appear, but that does not answer the question of whether it was an abuse of discretion not to remit the forfeiture in part.
The district court’s ruling did not speak to the amount of the forfeiture, as opposed to whether there ought to be a forfeiture. And the district court only addressed the *1119six factors we described in United States v. Amwest Surety Insurance Co.3 as they applied to forfeiture, not as they applied to partial remission. The district judge explained why full remission was not appropriate, not why partial remission was not. We had previously described, in United States v. Abernathy4 and United States v. Frias-Ramirez,5 only four factors, and have since noted two more; the law of this circuit is that “[t]hese are merely nonexclusive factors for consideration....”6 Because the district court’s ruling did not address whether the six factors justify partial remission, and the record does not show that the district court considered partial remission, we cannot properly hold that it did not abuse its discretion in denying partial remission. We should remand the case so that the district court may consider partial remission pursuant to these and any other relevant factors.
In ruling on the forfeiture, the district court said that (1) “the Sureties failed to ensure defendant’s appearance”; (2) “Surety Nguyen assisted and was complicit in defendant’s willful efforts to avoid and extend his self-surrender date”; (3) “Ms. Nguyen was proactive in keeping Mr. Nguyen out of custody”; (4) “the government was put to significant cost and inconvenience in trying to locate defendant, having staked out his residence and his business.” The district court did not explain why these factors justify a full $100,000 forfeiture rather than a remission down to, say, $5,000.
Also, reasons two and three, the “complicit” and “proactive” reasons, strike me as unjustified as a matter of law. Tracy Nguyen, besides being married to defendant Nguyen’s brother, was his lawyer. The conduct that the district court characterized as “complicit” and “proactive” was her filing of court papers to get continuances of Nguyen’s surrender date and avoid penalties for her client. It may have been imprudent to act as both surety for the defendant, in which role she would be best served by his being promptly locked up in jail, and as counsel for him, which gave her a duty to try to keep him out of jail and get him excused when he went for medical care on his troublesome nose instead of going to jail. But all she did to keep him out of jail was file papers and make representations in court, none of which have been found to be false. Language implying criminality or wrongfulness of a lawyer’s conduct in trying to keep her client out of jail is misplaced.
Tracy Nguyen served her client better than she served herself. Many loving relatives — wives who in the wee hours bail out husbands arrested for drunk driving, parents who go surety for children facing drug charges — act imprudently in terms of their own interests, but such conduct ought not to be characterized as wrongful. Under Amwest, the district court should have considered whether the sureties’ status as family members, rather than professionals, supported mitigating the forfeiture with partial remission,7 but did not.
There is one factor that the district court ruling and the majority do not discuss, that ought to have been considered *1120regarding remission (not forfeiture), and that is the expense of apprehending Nguyen. The majority says that the government need not provide itemized proof of expenses,8 and that is correct.9 But that proposition does not mean that the court should disregard the minimal financial burden to the government. Remission should be used to accomplish a rough proportionality between the extent of the forfeiture and the extent of the government’s burden.10
We held in Amwest that one factor is “appropriateness of the amount of the bond,” and that factor “looks more to the proper fixing of the amount of the bond” than to the cost of apprehension.11 That is plainly correct when a court looks back to see whether bail was set too high. Bail was not set too high in this case. Nguyen spoke at least one foreign language and could have fled to a foreign country and been extremely difficult to re-apprehend. Amwest goes on to say that “bail bonds are contracts for liquidated damages,”12 but that proposition can only be correct insofar as it speaks to appropriateness of the amount initially set as bail. Were it read more broadly, to mean that remission should not take into account subsequent events and expenses, then it would contra-diet the federal rule which it construes. As the majority concedes, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 46(e)(2) and (4) provide that the district court may “remit ... in part” if “justice does not require” the entire amount to be forfeited.13 Partial remission as provided for by the Rule could generally not be granted if the liquidated damages analogy controlled where the bail had not been mistakenly set too high. Where a liquidated damages provision in a contract is not invalid as a penalty, the specified amount can be recovered without regard to actual damages.14 In Amwest, the bond was for $100,000, the surety was a professional15 (not a relative, which we said in Amwest would have been a mitigating factor16), the defendant fled the jurisdiction17 (Nguyen did not), and the government spent $37,000 to catch him18 (Nguyen was easily and locally picked up), so the case should be distinguished on its facts.
In the Fourth Circuit, “a forfeiture should bear some reasonable relation to the cost and inconvenience to the government and the courts.”19 The Eighth Circuit uses the same language.20 The “reasonable relationship” may allow for “a substantial forfeiture to deter,” not just *1121reimbursement of government expense,21 but it still requires a look at the amount relative to the circumstances at the time of the forfeiture.
Quite often it is reasonable to set a fairly high bail where there is a serious risk of flight that might put the government to great expense to apprehend the defendant. That was so here. The $100,000 bail was appropriate as an analog to liquidated damages, so remission was not required under the language in Am-west. Quite often as well, a defendant violates the bail order without imposing a great burden on the government, so there is no just purpose for imposing the entire forfeiture on some suffering relative who posted bail.
There are circumstances where we are supposed to follow some rigid law without regard to what is just in the particular circumstances. This is not one of them. The law itself, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 46(e)(2), says that the district court is supposed to remit the bond in whole or part “if it otherwise appears that justice does not require the forfeiture.”22
. Tracy Nguyen put herself financially at risk for a brother-in-law she sees once a year at Chinese New Year. The security she posted “is my only residence where I live with my husband and two small children.” Bui is in the same situation, except that more family members (his wife, mother-in-law, and four children) live in the home to be forfeited. Justice does not require the draconian result imposed, and the district court did not consider the factors it is required to consider as they applied to partial remission, so we should remand for remission pursuant to those factors. We have a rule that instructs us to consider justice in the circumstances of the particular case, so we ought to do that, instead of construing the rule in a way that turns it into something blind and mechanical.
I respectfully dissent.

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 46(e)(2) & (4) (2001).

. United States v. Vaccaro, 51 F.3d 189, 192 (9th Cir.1995) (''[GJenerally the purpose of a bail bond is to insure that the accused will reappear at a given time.”) (quoting United States v. Toro, 981 F.2d 1045, 1049 (9th Cir.1992) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted)); United States v. Bass, 573 F.2d 258, 260 (5th Cir.1978) ("The purpose of a bail bond is not punitive; it is to secure the presence of the defendant.”).

. 54 F.3d 601, 603 (9th Cir.1995).

. 757 F.2d 1012, 1015 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 854, 106 S.Ct. 156, 88 L.Ed.2d 129 (1985).

. 670 F.2d 849, 852 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 842, 103 S.Ct. 94, 74 L.Ed.2d 86 (1982).

. United States v. Sar-Avi, 255 F.3d 1163, 1167 (9th Cir.2001). Accord Amwest, 54 F.3d at 603; Abernathy, 757 F.2d at 1015; Frias-Ramirez, 670 F.2d at 852.

. Amwest, 54 F.3d at 603.

. Maj. Op. at 1116.

. See Sar-Avi, 255 F.3d at 1168.

. See Accredited Surety & Casualty Co. v. United States, 723 F.2d 368, 369-70 (4th Cir.1983) ("[A] forfeiture should bear some reasonable relation to the cost and inconvenience to the government and the courts.”); Appearance Bond Surety v. United States, 622 F.2d 334, 337(8th Cir.1980) ("Moreover, [the] forfeiture ought to bear some reasonable relation to the cost and inconvenience to the government of regaining custody ....”) (internal quotation marks omitted).

. Amwest, 54 F.3d at 603-604.

. Id. at 604.

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 46(e)(2) & (4) (2001).

. See Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 356 & comments a & b (1981).

. Amwest, 54 F.3d at 604.

. Id. at 603.

. Id. at 602.

. Id. at 603.

. Accredited Surety, 723 F.2d at 369-70; Jeffers v. United States, 588 F.2d 425, 427 (4th Cir.1978); United States v. Kirkman, 426 F.2d 747, 752 (4th Cir.1970).

. Appearance Bond Surety, 622 F.2d at 337(quoting Kirkman, 426 F.2d at 752).

. Jeffers, 588 F.2d at 427. But see Kirkman, 426 F.2d at 752 ("Forfeitures are not properly ordered for the purpose of enriching the government or to punish a defendant.”).

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 46(e)(2) (2001).