Bail Snafu Leads to Escape for Convict

Carlos Alberto Hernandez pulled off a caper most crooks only dream of.

Nine days before being sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder, Hernandez bailed out of Los Angeles County Jail and hasn’t been seen since. Although Hernandez was convicted of shooting a man outside a Glendale bar, the judge never canceled his bail, so Hernandez gave jailers a $1.56-million promissory note and walked out.

“No one caught it,” said Glendale Police Sgt. Ian Grimes, who investigated the shooting. “No one ever thought that, after conviction, this guy was going to bail out. We all just felt sick.”

If that weren’t bad enough, authorities say the 25-year-old onetime construction worker secured the bail with deficient or bogus collateral.

Considered armed and dangerous, the former Echo Park resident is now believed to be living in Mexico. U.S. officials say that even if he’s found, getting him back may prove impossible because Mexico resists extraditing defendants who face life sentences.

Authorities disagree over who is to blame for Hernandez’s clever escape on Dec. 2. But flawed legal procedures, lax bail standards and an overwhelmed jail bureaucracy all played roles in handing Hernandez the key to his freedom.

And although his case is unusual, officials and legal experts acknowledge that no existing safeguards are considered reliable in stopping the next Hernandez from thwarting the justice system.

“Never underestimate the number of bureaucratic screw-ups that are possible,” said Loyola Law School professor Stan Goldman. “Maybe there ought to be something like the pilot’s checklist, something that’s added to the computer saying, ‘Bail is automatically canceled upon conviction unless a judge says otherwise.’ ”

In fact, Hernandez’s escape is not the first of its kind.

A convicted rapist and Koreatown gang leader, facing up to 271 years in prison, strolled out of county jail in 1999 after a judge failed to cancel his bail. The Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles police said they have no statistics indicating whether similar escapes have occurred.

“If there was such a thing, I’d call it judicial or prosecutorial malpractice,” said law school student Frank Hoyng, who narrowly escaped Hernandez’s bullets outside Chuy’s bar in downtown Glendale two years ago.

Hernandez had opened fire on Hoyng and his friend Edgar Martinez in retaliation for a dispute inside the bar that night. Martinez suffered six gunshot wounds.

Hoyng and Martinez fear Hernandez will come after them because their testimony was crucial to convicting him.

“This is ruining my life,” said Martinez, a former musician left unable to work by his injuries. “It’s ridiculous that someone can almost kill a man and drive three hours [to Mexico] to start fresh.”

Hernandez was sentenced in absentia to life in prison plus 25 years to life for the crime.

His walk to freedom began in the Pasadena courtroom of Judge Michelle R. Rosenblatt. The district attorney’s office says the judge failed to follow state law requiring her to rescind bail at the trial’s conclusion in November.

“This is a judicial obligation. It’s in the statute,” said Curt Livesay, chief deputy to Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley. The law states a convicted defendant “must be remanded” to the sheriff until sentencing, unless a judge makes a finding based on public safety and other circumstances to allow the defendant out of custody.

Allan Parachini, spokesman for the county’s 450 judges, denied judicial wrongdoing and pointed the finger at prosecutors.

“The penal code does not require the automatic revocation of bail,” he said. If prosecutors fail to bring up the subject, the judge “is not free to simply make up circumstances in which to continue or revoke bail.”

Either way, the court transcript shows that neither Rosenblatt nor prosecutor Charles Chaiyarachta mentioned bail after the guilty verdict.

Word of the bailout stunned Chaiyarachta when Hernandez failed to show up for his sentencing.

The prosecutor said he had not asked the judge to withdraw bail because it seemed too obvious to bring up.

“I’ve never had to do that before,” he said. “I will now.”

Other prosecutors agreed that it had never occurred to them to ask a judge to cancel bail after the conviction of a defendant who had not been bailed out before or during the trial.

Judge Rosenblatt declined to be interviewed.

According to Livesay and Parachini, no memorandum or warning has been circulated to judges or prosecutors to prevent a repeat of the unintended bailout.

Although only two convicted felons are known to have bailed out before sentencing -- Hernandez and the Koreatown gang leader -- the extent of the problem in and beyond Los Angeles County is difficult to gauge. Peggy Hora, a 15-year instructor and former dean at the California Judicial College, said that to her knowledge, bail is routinely revoked after a guilty verdict in a violent felony case, but there’s no foolproof checklist.

Criminal suspects, except in capital cases, are constitutionally entitled to post bail before and during trial, although no figures are available on how many do so.

Judges sometimes permit convicted defendants to remain free before sentencing or during an appeal. But legal experts said this is rarely done in serious crimes, and then only after both sides present arguments.

The case highlights the little-understood world of bail transactions. A bail bond is a promissory note arranged by a bondsman, who gets a percentage of the bail as his fee and is backed by an insurance company. No money is paid to the jail clerk or held in escrow to await the outcome of the inmate’s trial. If the inmate skips town, bail is forfeited and the bondsman has six months to bring back the defendant, or the insurer must pay the full bail to the county treasury.

Investigators are still trying to figure out how Hernandez, who by all accounts was flat broke, found the resources to pay the bail bondsman’s $156,000 commission -- the standard 10% -- and why representatives of the bond-issuing company, Aegis Security Insurance Co. of Pennsylvania, didn’t verify the collateral pledged by two of Hernandez’s associates.

Sgt. Grimes said the firm’s representatives refused to divulge who paid the commission, or even whether it was actually paid. “We don’t believe any substantial collateral exists,” he added.

Even Hernandez’s attorney, Mark Bledstein, was “as surprised as anyone” when he learned his client had bailed out. “I know he had no assets,” he said.

Vincent Smith, bail bond administrator for Aegis, said Hernandez’s collateral “is nowhere near as solid as we would like it to be.” He said “checks and balances” are in place to guard against fraud, but he declined to explain. “We realize there was a mistake made at whatever level and we are trying to address that.”

And, even though Hernandez’s bail is guaranteed by Aegis, the county won’t get its money without a fight.

Smith said the company has hired an attorney to challenge the pay-up notice served July 28 “through every legal avenue available to us.”

The state Department of Insurance, which regulates the bail industry, is investigating the transaction between Hernandez and Aegis.

Investigations chief Jim Harrington declined to comment on the case. But he noted that state law does not require bail bondsmen to obtain or verify collateral. “It may not be good business practice. But I can’t take away someone’s license for that,” he said.

At the county jail, a top official acknowledged that Hernandez’s post-conviction bailout should have set off alarm bells. Sheriff’s Capt. Tom Laing said clerks are under no obligation to scrutinize every court ruling, but they frequently catch contradictory or incomplete court orders on bail and sentences.

He did not dispute that more escapes like Hernandez’s could occur.

“If the judge sends back the order with a sentencing date only and doesn’t say anything about the bail, then we automatically take that as being that bail is set. The court knows that,” Laing said. With the comings and goings in the 17,000-inmate jail, “we follow the letter of the paperwork here.”