A story from Texas popped up in one of my social feeds the other day, which started with a guy skipping bail on a capital murder charge,

And this wasn’t my first thought, because a couple of the story’s other features caught my attention first, but I did find myself wondering: what kind of court system grants bail for capital murder? The answer, according to a quick search, is that bail is possible, depending on the judge, but unlikely.

Anyway, the capital murder suspect skipped bail, the bail bondsman sent some bounty hunters after him, and subsequent events in the story led me to wonder: what kind of standards does the bounty hunting profession have in the state of Texas?

…some.

There’s a bit in there about whether or not a bounty hunter is allowed to “openly” carry a gun on the job, which differs depending on whether he’s a “commissioned security officer” or a mere private investigator. If the goons in this story were PIs, that might explain the flashbang –

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, the goons found someone with a “similar name” selling haircuts out of his garage. To make sure they had the right guy, they ran his face through an “AI facial recognition tool” that declared him a 79% match for their target.

If you’re thinking that 79% doesn’t sound very sure, good guess; the actual murder suspect had reportedly fucked off out of the country. The goons had the wrong man.¹

Now bear in mind they were targeting the wrong man while hearing about their tactics:

They rolled up in a rented van and threw a flashbang grenade at him. And they reportedly followed that up with “ARs aimed at [the wrong man’s] face,” so forget what I was just guessing about why they led off their attack by throwing an incendiary at him.

So-called “civilian flashbangs” exist and are legal, but still, what the fuck? If the guy’s other home business was something like small-engine repair, or he otherwise had any noticeable amount of oil, gas, paint, or similar flammables in his garage, everyone involved would have gone up in flames.

(I’m assuming the client getting that haircut had left beforehand, because he just drops out of the story. If he was still around, then the goons would have just flashbanged and potentially incinerated two innocent men. And themselves.)

“We have to take precautions, because we have to make it home to our families as well,” one of the goons said afterward, not at all mentioning the bail money he wanted a percentage of. I’m guessing that the bail amount for capital murder, for a suspect who (apparently) could easily flee the country, is pretty high, and bounty hunters get, what, 10 percent? 20?

The victim was turned loose by the cops after fingerprinting came up a 0% match for the bail-jumper, and the goons were brought up on “aggravated kidnapping” charges, which might refer to the ARs getting brandished. To this layman it looks like the lesser felony of “unlawful restraint” (“the actor recklessly exposes the victim to a substantial risk of serious bodily injury”) is a better fit, but maybe the localgov is more fixated on the ARs than I am and/or really, really wants to throw the book at these fools. (Or – cynic mode – someone in the local DA’s office wants the case against these goons to fail due to overcharging…)

Anyway, that was a quick glimpse into the current state of bail enforcement. As soon as I read it, I knew I just had to post a reaction.

 

P.S. I tagged this “Police” because bounty hunters effectively are police, enforcing the power of the judicial system.

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1. And here I was thinking I was worried about high-stakes 99% matches…