fine assessed, the individual will not be allowed to make payment on the underlying charge. Rather, the person must post bond, receive a new court date, appear in court, and start the process anew. Even when the underlying fine has been assessed, a person in jail may still be forced to make a bond payment instead of a fine payment to secure release if court staff are unavailable to determine the amount the person owes. And when a person attempts to resolve a warrant before they end up arrested, a bond payment will typically be required unless the person can afford to pay the underlying fine in full, as, by purported policy, the court does not accept partial payment of fines outside of a court-sanctioned payment plan.
Bond forfeiture procedures also raise significant due process concerns. Under current practice, the first missed appearance or missed payment following a bond payment results in a warning letter being sent; after the second missed appearance or payment, the court initiates a forfeiture action (and issues another arrest warrant). As with "warrant warning letters" described above, our investigation has been unable to verify that the court consistently sends bond forfeiture warning letters. And, as with warrant warning letters, bond forfeiture warning letters are sometimes returned to the court, but court staff members do not appear to make any further attempt to contact the intended recipient.
Upon a bond being forfeited, the court directs the bond money into the City’s account and does not apply the amount to the individual’s underlying fine. For example, if a person owes a $200 fine payment, is arrested on a warrant, and posts a bond of $200, the forfeiture of the bond will result in the fine remaining $200 and an arrest warrant being issued. If, instead, Ferguson were to allow this $200 to go toward the underlying fine, this would resolve the matter entirely, obviating the need for any warrant or subsequent court appearance. Not applying a forfeited bond to the underlying fine is especially troubling considering that this policy does not appear to be clearly communicated to those paying bonds. Particularly in cases where the bond is set at an amount near the underlying fine owed—which we have found to be common—it is entirely plausible that a person paying bond would mistakenly believe that payment resolves the case.
When asked why the forfeited bond is not applied to the underlying fine, court staff asserted that applicable law prohibits them from doing so without the bond payer’s consent.[1] That explanation is grounded in an incorrect view of the law. In Perry v. Aversman, 168 S.W.3d 541 (Mo. Ct. App. 2005), the Missouri Court of Appeals explicitly upheld a rule requiring that forfeited bonds be applied to pending fines of the person who paid bond and found that such practices are acceptable so long as the court provides sufficient notice. Id. at 543–46. In light of the fact that applicable law permits forfeited bonds to be applied to pending fines, Ferguson’s longstanding practice of directing forfeited bond money to the City’s general fund is troubling. In fiscal year 2013 alone, the City collected forfeited bond amounts of $177,168, which could instead have been applied to the fines of those making the payments.
Ferguson’s rules and procedures for refunding bond payments upon satisfaction of the underlying fine raise similar concerns. Ferguson requires that when a person pays the underlying
- ↑ Critically, however, when a person attends court after paying a bond and is assessed a fine, court staff members do automatically apply the bond already paid to the fine owed, and in fact require application of the bond to the fine regardless of the defendant’s wishes. Thus, the court has simultaneously asserted that it can apply a bond to a fine without a defendant’s consent when the bond would otherwise be returned to the defendant, but that it cannot apply a bond to a fine without a defendant’s consent when the bond would otherwise be forfeited into the City’s own accounts.
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