In the United
States legal system, the 1872 U.S. Supreme Court case Taylor v.
Taintor, 16 Wall (83 U.S. 366, 21 L.Ed. 287), is cited as having
established that the person into whose custody an accused is
remanded as part of the accused's bail has sweeping rights to
recover that person (although this may have been accurate at the
time the decision was reached, the portion cited was obiter
dicta and has no binding precedential value). Most bounty
hunters are hired by a bail bondsman: the bounty hunter is paid
a portion of the bail the fugitive initially paid. If the
fugitive eludes bail, the bondsman, not the bounty hunter, is
responsible for the remainder of the fugitive's bail.
Thus, the
bounty hunter is the bail bondsman's way of ensuring his clients
arrive at trial. In the United States, bounty hunters catch an
estimated 31,500 bail jumpers per year, about 90% of people who
jump bail.[1] Bounty hunters are also sometimes known as "bail
enforcement agents" or "fugitive recovery agents," which are the
preferred industry and polite terms, but in common speech, they
are still called "bounty hunters".
