Flight and fright

WESTERN BUREAU:

Juliet* looks back ruefully on a time when her trust was betrayed by a supposed friend who absconded on bail after she stood as surety for the woman in a larceny case – something she is determined will never happen again.

“Even though she was caught stealing, I had a soft spot for her, so I felt sorry for her and I agreed to stand surety for her … and she just did not turn up in court. I will never stand surety for anyone else again, unless it is my own child, but no friend business as I have never seen her or heard from her since,” Juliet told The Sunday Gleaner last week.

According to Juliet, in 2007, she offered to act as a surety for her friend after the other woman was accused of stealing money from the company at which they were working at the time.

Very good friends

Becoming a surety, or guarantor, meant that Juliet took on the burden of paying the bail bond and was responsible for making sure that the accused woman appeared in court on the scheduled hearing date.

“For years, we were very good friends, and I never knew she was meddling in the company’s money. She was a collector, and so she collected money on behalf of the company,” Juliet explained. “I do not remember how much money it was that she was charged with stealing, but as her surety, I had to put up a bus that I had as the collateral, and the bus was valued at about $2 million.”

But Juliet got a nasty shock not long afterwards when the accused woman fled Jamaica and left her holding the bag.

“By the time the police made their investigations, they found out that she had skipped the country, that she had run off to the United States. I had to go in front of the judge, owing to the fact that I was her surety, and when I went there, the judge asked me if I knew that I could be paying at this time,” Juliet recalled.

“The judge warned me about standing surety for other people, and eventually, I realised that this is something I should not do unless it is a close family member,” Juliet added. “I had to pay some money because it all ended up on me, and the judge warned me not to do it again. I had thought I would have to do prison time, and I was very scared, but looking back at it, the judge was quite lenient with me.”

Juliet shared her experience with The Sunday Gleaner one month after a surety in another case was collared by the courts after two American women for whom she stood as guarantor absconded bail and fled the island.

A bench warrant was issued for the arrest of the accused, Regina West-Thompson and Simone Bolden, after they failed to appear in the St James Parish Court on December 16, 2021, having previously been bailed in the sum of $1 million each in relation to nine pounds of cocaine that they allegedly tried to smuggle through the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay on June 30 last year.

As part of their bail conditions, West-Thompson and Bolden were ordered to report daily to the Barrett Town Police Station in St James and were placed under a curfew order, restricting them to their designated place of residence between the hours of 2 p.m. and 8 a.m. daily.

Issued stop orders

The court had also issued stop orders to prevent the women from leaving Jamaica, which meant that their travel documents should also have been seized by the police.

“The surety said that the day the bail was being processed, she saw the persons packing up. So now the surety will have to pay that cost,” parish judge Kaysha Grant said in court when the matter was mentioned on December 16.

“You may find yourself in custody if you cannot get the person here on each and every occasion,” she later remarked while speaking to a surety in an unrelated case.

Under Section 15 of the Bail Act, a person who runs away while on bail for an offence can be fined up to $500,000 or sentenced to two years’ imprisonment if convicted. Section 16 empowers the court to issue a warrant for a person’s arrest if they fail to surrender into custody at the appointed time, having been granted bail.

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn told The Sunday Gleaner that roughly one in 10 accused persons may attempt to run away or otherwise commit an offence after being given bail.

“By and large, maybe 90 per cent of the time, the accused person makes sure he comes to court. But if you look at Section 4 of the Bail Act, if the accused threatens a witness in any way or commits another offence while on bail, then the judge can revoke the bail and the person is remanded in custody. Usually, you have conditions attached, including stop orders, or curfew orders, where you may have them being in their home by a particular time every evening,” said Llewellyn.

“Once the accused persons are foreigners, I have seen some judges not giving them bail, which has forced [some persons] to plead guilty early,” Llewellyn added.

According to the DPP, although Jamaican law enforcement personnel could ask their overseas counterparts for assistance in locating those who have absconded, it usually is very difficult to get them back.

“On occasion, you may have a situation where, years after, they come back (voluntarily take a trip to the island), and a warrant which has been issued for their arrest is executed. It depends, though, as they may decide not to come back at all,” she said.

Juliet looks back at her experience as a frightening lesson.

“It was probably the scariest time of my life because I had never gotten into any trouble with the law, and that could have put a red flag on my name,” she lamented.

*Name changed to protect identity.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com