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| Pierre Wilson, TEEM poster boy February 2018 |
Racist Judicial System or a Career Criminal
that has Burned too Many Bondsmen?
Poor Pierre Wilson...the Oklahoman would have us believe that he was sitting in jail for months because of an "alleged" forged check and that the poor mistreated Wilson would get to see a judge quickly so he could "straighten it out". No, he wasn't a criminal, things just needed to be re arranged, straightened out, things put in the correct perspective so he could go free.
But thanks to TEEM, former Speaker Kris Steele's publicly and privately funded "non profit" Wilson is out of jail without paying an attorney and without having a mean old bail bondsman watching over him to ensure he shows up for court. Wilson is now "allegedly" working for a golf course and as a server at a "upscale North OKC restaurant". Really, a server? As in handling credit cards kind of server? What could go wrong....
TEEM of course believes that career criminals like Wilson just need training and job skills, maybe a bus pass or fuel card, and all is hunky dory. TEEM claimed in the article that people that couldn't bond out of jail received harsher sentences, which is likely true as bond companies don't want to write bonds on career criminals that jump bail twice like Wilson...oh, dear, the Oklahoman didn't mention that part, did it?
The Oklahoman story also mentions that out of nearly 100 cases only one earned new criminal charges while 22, or around 25% earned "technical charges". What isn't mentioned is that the failure to appear rate, the very reason why we have bail bond, has surpassed 40% and even 50% in most months.
The judges say that rate is only 16% but to get there they bury the FTA, Failure To Appear, cases in with all the cases including the cases where a court date might be six to eight months in the future. Once you compare the FTA rate with cases that are settled a far different story is shown.
Meet Pierre Wilson, career criminal and now poster boy for soft on crime and criminal justice reform. His criminal record started in the early nineties and has continued till last June when he was arrested for forging a check, improper tag display, and driving under suspension.
And poor Wilson, racist court system keeping him in jail, well that is because he has TWO active warrants out for his arrest dating back to 2010 arrests for DUI. The cases say closed in 2011 but then in 2015 the cases were reopened after the fines and fees weren't paid and it appears that both warrants are still valid and the poster boy is on the run from the law. Claims are still being filed each year on his income tax refund over unpaid fees and fines dating back to the year 2000. The man is a convicted drug dealer, drunk, and much more.
Bondsmen won't help the guy, that much is true. Because Wilson has jumped bond in the past and has been sued by bondsmen trying to recover the bond money they put up for Wilson.
But what are the real numbers on failure to appears in Oklahoma County? At the beginning of the pre trial release program there were 230 jail releases in August of 2017. Thirty four cases have been closed by plea deals, 111 cases were FTA or Failure to Appear, and 89 cases have pending court dates where the defendant might well fail to appear. The important metric is closed cases compared to FTA, a 326% failure to appear rate. Or adding the closed cases to the pending cases gives 123 cases with 111 cases of FTA which gives you a 47% failure to appear rate and less than 14% of the arrests in August of 2017 have been adjudicated...
And what were these crimes? Around 50 of the 230 crimes were what we would consider crimes with victims, burglary, assault, domestic abuse, forgery, larceny, and other crimes. Around 45 were DUI cases. Believe it or not around 20 cases were FTA, failure to appear in court. The rest or around 115 cases or exactly half were drug cases. No weed cases, heroin, crack, and cocaine. Around 24 cases were violations of suspended sentences or deferred sentences, re offenders that were given a shot at cleaning up their act and refused to do so. Arrested and turned loose a few days later while waiting for the system to send them to prison or give them another chance.
And October was worse, much worse, as these career criminals suddenly realized that showing up for court was entirely optional. Of the 203 jail releases around 69 cases are still pending, 51 cases were FTA, 33 were No File which means that as of today the prosecutor office has refused to file charges on them, and only SIX cases were settled by plea deals. There were around 23 DUI cases, around 70 actual criminal cases like prostitution, car theft, assault and battery, theft, and similar crimes, and 32 violations of suspended or deferred sentences. The other approximately 75 cases were all drug arrests and including two weed cases among them. The rest of the drug cases were pills, opiods, heroin, meth, and cocaine.
Closed cases versus FTA was 51 cases to six, 850% ratio of cases closed versus fugitives on the run. The closed cases were so few that adding them to the pending cases for a comparison wasn't worth doing the calculations.
Of course the Oklahoma is beating the soft on crime justice reform drum and published as story about Judge Truong stating that only 16% fail to appear and only 4% under the care of TEEM or other programs. In fact over 50% fail to appear and that is with the majority of the cases still pending with future court dates.
Why is the county jail overcrowded? Not because Pierre Wilson can't afford $200.00 for bail money. The jail is full because David Prater is refusing to file charges for months on end after the people have been arrested and are sitting in jail and because the public defender that represents the vast majority of the criminal cases refuse to visit the jails to visit with their clients. Instead the public defenders talk to their clients for two minutes before going before the judge and ask for continuances only to repeat the process in three months. The entire system is geared toward letting criminals back out on the street as quickly as possible instead of punishing the criminals to deter criminal behavior.
