At House of Bail Bonds, our job is to provide the utmost in customer service while helping people bail their loved ones out of jail. The bail bond client’s job is to appear in all court ordered appearances.
Every once in a while, a client will miss court due to illness, error or other unforeseeable circumstances. The court will then issue a bench warrant and forfeit the bail bond. This is usually remedied with the re-appearance of the defendant in court.
Then there are those few clients who miss their court date on purpose. That is when the bounty hunters, otherwise known as Fugitive Recovery Agents, have to actually find the individual, arrest them and then surrender them to the local county jail.
In this case, the fugitive ran to Arizona and worst yet, decided to hide out in a Navajo Indian reservation. Here is where things can get tricky real fast for bounty hunters.
Bounty Hunters or Fugitive Recovery Agents have authority to arrest a bail bond fugitive. This authority is derived from certain U.S. Supreme Court rulings, but is also regulated by each individual state as well. In this case, Arizona does not allow bounty hunters from other states to chase bail bond skips that have fled to that state. Arizona Bounty Hunter Law mandates that a Fugitive Recovery Agent from that state conduct the investigation and/or apprehension of the fugitive.
It gets even trickier when the fugitive absconds to an indian reservation. Indian reservations are considered sovereign and they have their own system of law. Luckily for us, this individual was not a Native American and therefore not fully protected on the reservation. The Arizona bounty hunter helping us with this case was fully aware of reservation protocol in regards to bail bond fugitives. He immediately went to the tribal police to inform them of the arrest warrant.
To be continued…..