CTP (S3EOctSpecial2) Bail, Justice, and Consequences

CTP (S3EOctSpecial2) Bail, Justice, and Consequences
We trace Ken W. Good’s journey from Texas roots to bail law expert and unpack why popular reform models produced more failure-to-appear, larger backlogs, and fewer consequences. Faith, forgiveness, and public safety meet in a frank conversation about broken windows, accountability, and what data really shows.
• Ken W Good’s background and path into bail law
• O’Donnell v Harris County’s rise, reversals, and lessons
• Faith, forgiveness, and the need for earthly justice
• Crime concentration and the cost of failed appearances
• Broken windows as a practical anti-crime tool
• Why no-cash bail models increase backlogs and dismissals
• Media narratives versus measured outcomes
• Resources to track reform data and legislation
Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes
For more information, they can go to our website, pbtx.com
You can also just go to theBailpost.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Banter & Guest Intro
• 3:34 Ken Good’s Roots and Law Journey
• 10:59 Entering Bail Law & O’Donnell Case
• 15:39 Faith, Ethics, and Legal Duty
• 21:02 Bail Reform Backfires & Case Overturns
• 29:27 Rhetoric, Media Frames, and Violence

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:19

Welcome to Institutionalist Politics Podcast, aka C T P. I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. C T P is your no must, no fuss, just me, you, and occasional guest type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. Graham Norton will say, let's get on with the show. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Christitutionalist podcast. Uh, we were supposed to be talking today with Johnny B. Good. Hey, wasn't available, so we have to settle for Ken W. Good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06

A distant cousin.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Yeah, it's a joke, people. It's just a joke. Seriously, very much looking forward to talking with Ken W. Good, since I and his team connected earlier this month, the month being September. We are recording September Monday, September the 29th. I say that for behind the scenes purposes. And welcome to the show, Ken W. Good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40

Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. I've heard all the good jokes you have. I've heard the Goody Two Shoes, Mr. Good Bar. You know, people, even though there's no E on it, people call me Mr. Goad. Uh, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

Well, thank you. I'm I'm glad you added that to show you have a sense of humor, right? And I'm sensitive to names because I'm Joseph M. Leonard. It looks French, it's not Lennard, it's Leonard without an O, and I have to put my middle initial in there like you do too. You know, I a last name that's similar in any way to someone else, you need the middle initial because there is a Joseph Lennard out of South Carolina that's also an author.

SPEAKER_01: 2:30

So I I put my middle initial because if you just put Ken Good, it sounds like can goods.

SPEAKER_00: 2:37

Another good joke. No, that's great. Or or or uh well, with the W in there, if they miss the G, they may think you're associated with penwood trucks.

SPEAKER_01: 2:53

I've been called Ken Wood before, so that's not anything new either.

SPEAKER_00: 3:00

So all right, wasted enough time, but my audience knows I can never pass on whatever lane puns can be worked in. And indeed, if we can't make fun of ourselves and our names, we shouldn't make fun of anyone else. But before we get to the why are you here, let's get into the who are you? Where were you born and raised? Where are you now? That sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01: 3:28

Okay, so my name is Ken Good. I am you know, I say this with trepidation. I'm 64 years old.

SPEAKER_00: 3:36

I just turned 63 this year, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 3:40

So I'm a year older than you. I was born tech in Texas. I was born in this little town called Anson, Texas, which is north of Abilene.

SPEAKER_00: 3:49

And you don't have any of that accent still at all.

SPEAKER_01: 3:54

Yeah, yeah. We're laughing. I'm working on it. I'm trying to decrease it a little bit, but for the benefit of the transcript, we're laughing.

SPEAKER_00: 4:05

We're laughing. Okay, go on.

SPEAKER_01: 4:08

Well, I grew up in Texas. My parents were public school teachers. They taught us the importance of an education, but you know, we grew up in a really small town. I mean, a town where everybody became ranchers and farmers. Nobody, nobody went to college. I had 24 people in my high school class, and I think five of us went to college. I think that's changed since then. But I mean, that was back in 1979. But my mother and I always watched Perry Mason late at night. You know, at that time they had the news on Sunday night, and then they have news extra or sports extra from from 10:30 to 10:35, and then from 10:35 to 11:35, which was late even for us. We would stay up and watch Perry Mason. So I always had a dream of going to law school, and I would say it was a dream. It wasn't a goal because I really didn't understand goals at that age. And so I really didn't, you know, get in the first time I applied because I worked three, you know, worked almost full-time. I graduated from college in three years instead of four, and I worked, and so my grades reflected that you can't do both full-time. And so I got a master's degree. I taught high school for two years, like my parents did, and then I went to law school. And so I was I loved law school, loved everything about it. I was on law review, I was on a lot of national team speaking events. It's just kind of where I clicked. I was just very blessed. And so, but also kind of naive. I think one of the kids, or one of the running jokes when I first got there in law school was that you know, Brennan had been on the US Supreme Court for so long, he had been appointed by Abraham Lincoln. And it took me several months to work out in my head the numbers to realize that there was no possible way that Brennan had been appointed by Abraham Lincoln. And so I was like, oh, that was a joke. Okay, I'm I'm just naive. I didn't realize it. So, you know, I I graduated from law school in 1989. I moved to Tyler, Texas. I was working for a large firm that had a Tyler office, and so I've worked there for like 12 years with the same group of guys. The guys, you know, the person responsible for teaching me how to practice law. And so I started kind of specializing in the area of bail law. I am Texas counsel for several companies, and I'm on the board of directors of the professional bondsmen of Texas. I'm on their legislative team. I testify and and help influence bills at the state legislature. And then there was this case that was at in Houston called O'Donnell versus Harris County, and someone asked me to go to one of the early hearings in that case. And let me just that this was the seminal case. At one point, it was cited across the country as the case that was that we're doing Bell all wrong, and we need to reform it, we need to have criminal justice reform. And I came out of that hearing scared because I thought the judge was going the wrong way. I thought she was applying the law incorrectly, and I was worried. And and because there was no one telling the story from from the industry's perspective, and I thought everything that was being said was, you know, interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 7:16

Well, you're you're kind of now starting to get into the why you're here. So before we do that, two things popped in my mind while you were talking. First being, and relax, people, I'm just having a little fun here, right? The first thing was the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar comes to mind. You know, right. We won't hold against you, you're a lawyer.

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

And then Well, you know, you you know, I will say this in response to that. The best compliment I ever received by my daughter was that you know, they read To Kill a Mockingbird in School. And she told me that the whole time they were reading it, that she saw me as the lead character. And, you know, my wife is an attorney, so we have, you know, we have a lot of attorneys, and my two children are very smart. But I just I remember that as one of the uh the the best compliments I've ever received. And it also scared me because how do you live up to that?

SPEAKER_00: 8:11

Yeah, oh I I hear you, and uh now a third pun comes to mind, right? There are playing off your name, both good and bad attorneys, right? Good and bad cops, good and bad in everything. And the other joke that came to my mind was while you were saying as you testified, so you're a snitch, eh?

SPEAKER_01: 8:37

Well, you know, I used to say, you know, uh, people or I used to hear you couldn't afford an excellent attorney, you got stuck with a good attorney. And then I had a professor in law school, her name was Phelan, and then I had another attorney that I that was an associate when I first started Praxis Law and her last name was Dick. And I kept saying that the three of us should start a law firm together and we would be feeling good, whatever. And it was uh I thought for just the name alone we would make a fortune.

SPEAKER_00: 9:06

But um, now the three stew just do do we do what was that? The three stooges pardon language cheat them, cheat them in half. Do we oh I'm gonna need them in half. I'm gonna have to cut that little part out because I want a little too PG13 that I usually do on the show, G-rated. So uh note to self edit, edit. Uh people will probably guess what I said, but at any rate, indeed, the why you are here is the bail reform movement, which perhaps there should have been some, in my opinion, also. Let me just say it up front, went way too far. And the murder recently demonstrates that.

SPEAKER_01: 10:01

Well, and you know, what I was saying was, you know, I got involved in this area specifically as a result of going to see a case. And I think I've been proven, you know, my concern about that case has been proven true because that case is now the judge has been overturned six, seven, eight, or maybe nine times in that case. And in a subsequent proceeding, the the Fifth Circuit ruled that that case should have never been filed in federal court. And and at one point it was cited across the country as the case for bail reform, and it's now been overturned. And so I that's what kind of what got me started in in this specialty area of writing articles. And I've written numerous articles across the country and about criminal justice reform and specifically about bail reform.

SPEAKER_00: 10:42

Yeah, I and this being a Christian show, I believe in forgiveness, but like Charlie Kirk's wife, Erica Kirk, I forgive him. That's what we're supposed to do as Christians. But, but, but, but there's a but there is a however, there is the rest of the Bible in context needed there. That doesn't mean, oh, skip the trial, let them go free. No, that's not what that means. Inherent in the forgiveness is the hope in the prayer that they see the light, they're willing to admit their faults, their crime, they're wanting to repent and reform. Otherwise, indeed, earthly justice does need to still continue and prevail. And indeed, if no remorse shown, the old testament was not completely erased by Jesus. You need to follow the whole context of the New Testament to understand where parts were indeed removed, but some stand like Genesis, Leviticus, and Numbers, the death penalty, though who sheddeth man's blood shall have by man his blood is shed. The death penalty applies, but the murder we're talking about is the Irena Zarutka, and I apologize if I get that name wrong, right on the New York subway, where someone slain her, not with a gun. It's not the inanimate objects issue here, it's the evil human who in that case used a knife, banning assault trumpets to go back to Jericho, right? The walls of Jericho came down because of trumpets instructed by God. Should the Jericho survivors to you know mitigate their feelings, ban assault trumpets? Right? The idiocy of the inanimate object blame is ridiculous. But yeah, the person who murdered Irina had many offenses where he should have been locked away, the murder would have never happened. Same with Kate Stanley, same with Molly, same with those were illegal aliens in that case. Or yeah, illegal immigrants.

SPEAKER_01: 13:19

Well, we're getting more and more examples of these things. I mean, it you know, look at Charlie Kirk. I mean, my family and I are very strong Christians, and so we have a firm foundation in in the Bible, and we have a good relationship with the Lord. But, you know, we're supposed to give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. That doesn't mean we give up public safety because we're Christians. We're we can't, we're not supposed to turn the other cheek and say, okay, there's no consequences. I mean, and you know, we live in a time where people take advantage of your Christian faith and just and they'll use it against you. And we see that. Look at what Charlie Kirk did and how he was just going to college campuses because he cared for youth of America, and he was just having uh uh a civilized conversation, but that's not the way it was portrayed. It was portrayed in the news that he was a hate monger, and that as a result of that, you know, someone decided that they needed to end his life because he was full of so much hate, which could not have been further from the truth. Now we have examples of because of the of the hateful language people are uh, you know, we have a guy that showed up in Dallas just last week and started shooting at the ICE facility. And the very first thing on the news you hear is that he's a right winger, possibly, because the people that got shot were were ICE detainees. And what they don't report is how many times he was shooting, it was just scatter shot trying to get it anybody, and he and he ended up shooting the very people that he thought he was helping. Yeah. That's a good example of bail of criminal justice reform, bail reform across the country. Even if you want to argue these are well-intended people, I'm not sure that that's true for their whole coalition. A lot of times the very people they hurt are the people they claim that they're they're wanting to help. So, you know, the 50% of all murder victims in the United States are young black males, and by and large, the people that kill them are young black males as well.

SPEAKER_00: 15:18

And so somehow in this whole debate, Oh, you're not allowed to talk about that.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

That's a you can be favoring the young black male murderers over the young black male victims, and and that's turning everything on its head. It's just it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 15:33

And yes, literally, I said we're recording Monday, the 29th of September, just yesterday, also. And of course, they're trying, oh, it's gotta be a right winger, shut up an LDS and set fire to church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. No, these are left-wing radicalized people, and the evidence shows it no matter how much, and for any and every Timothy McVeigh, which I'll concede as a right winger, example you could legitimately give rather than lie like you are about these cases. Well, but you know, I would say I've got 9,999 examples of the other.

SPEAKER_01: 16:46

But you know, I part, I mean, the party has moved so far to the left that they have created this rhetoric that causes people who listen to it and have mental issues to think that they need to do something about it. I saw a good article, I think, yesterday as well, summarizing and even showing um a speech from President Clinton, probably an address to a joint session of Congress where he's talking about illegal immigration. And and they they were the comment was made that that speech today would be labeled hate speech and would be labeled Mog. By the left. And I think there's a reason for that. The reason for that is the Democrats like to say that everybody's a threat to democracy, but all they're really saying is they're a threat to Democrats because they can't win. Yeah, their power. They can't win without doing these type things anymore, and that's where we are. And so we have to reckon, we have to call it when something doesn't work. We have to call it and we have to change it because they're never going to admit to it, because they need that anger, they need the they need illegal aliens in the country so they can get more power for the for the blue states.

SPEAKER_00: 18:05

Many issues I want to touch on. That indeed it's not, it's all about power and control for the left. What is good for their power and control, nothing about what's good for U.S. citizens. And yeah, like uh Matthew 7 is really condemned, not lest ye be condemned. Final judgment reserved for the Lord, right? That doesn't then eliminate worldly and earthly justice. You mentioned turn the other cheek, I talk all the time. It doesn't mean read the whole Bible, full kind, always be a sucker. It's not what Jesus is saying, and render unto Caesar the other of the several most warped and twisted scriptures from the Bible, and you kind of raise the question, right? Yeah, all this rhetoric brings up the hypothetical if you had a time machine that could go back and kill baby Hitler. Well, you can't prove a negative. What if you did go back and kill baby Hitler? It could have been worse if Himmler or Goldworth.

SPEAKER_01: 19:20

How would it have changed? The German public voted and and approved every change that Hitler wanted until a lot until he took uh mass control. But I mean, they suspended the constitution. So what I mean, what makes us believe that someone else would not have just stepped into that movement?

SPEAKER_00: 19:38

That's exactly my point. Himmler, Goebbels, somebody else, potentially even worse, who may have not been as insane, may have been still evil, but more normal thinker might have prosecuted that war to a point where they won the war and more people could have died.

SPEAKER_01: 20:03

I mean, do we really want I mean, we are we at the point in this world today where we say that Hitler was crazy, and that's how we justify what he did? Because I could make a bunch of arguments that he was just a very smart politician, that he blamed and and pointed the coded a subculture, yes. Yeah, he scapegoated coded the problems that were going on in Germany as he rose to power effectively. And I would say that to some extent we have that going on in the United States right now, where we're scapegoating problems or we're ignoring problems and we're blaming everything on a group.

SPEAKER_00: 20:40

And right next to the victimhood mentality, well, and the whole yeah, the whole victimhood mentality, and so many, and there are some on the right that are anti-Semitic. I'm not claiming there aren't, but this is not a this is not a situation where it's both equally bad.

SPEAKER_01: 21:00

It's not. I mean, we have too many examples. How many times has I mean, I it's just ridiculous. I mean, we can count on you know both hands and go to our toes, examples of where people have been listened to this rhetoric where somebody's Hitler, somebody, I mean, every presidential candidate since Eisenhower on the right has been called Hitler. And and now they're saying, oh, it's just worse now. Well, no, when you call when everybody's Hitler, then nobody's Hitler. And you know, they keep making these analogies that why the the right is Hitler. The next person who runs for president is on the right is going to be worse than than Trump, is gonna be Hitler because that's what you do when you can't make an argument. When you cannot respond on the merits, you go to name calling, you you go to toxic language, you go back to identity politics that says, don't listen to you because you're a racist. So I don't have to respond to the merits of your argument. That's identity politics. And we're getting away from that, we need to do it more.

SPEAKER_00: 22:00

Yeah, and I like Greg Gutfeld the other day said, I've always had the uh philosophy, yes, call people fat, call them short, call them, you know, I've called people names. Absolutely, but it pales in comparison to you constantly trying to call us racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, this, that, and the other, worse than Hitler, all that stuff, because you cannot have a policy discussion. You will lose that every time.

SPEAKER_01: 22:37

Well, and the part of the problem is with the policy discussion is I think that the the left has outsourced their policies on criminal justice reform, bail reform. They've outsourced it to the Soros groups. So they can't involve and can't get involved in discussion because they'll lose their support. So they uh and and the advocates on their side will never admit it's not working. They'll always say we need more time. They'll they'll point to these pseudo-studies that they even had their own groups uh write. I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, if if if if every time you hear something from the Brennan institute talking about how crime is is going down or it's not being increased because of bow reform or criminal justice reform, that's just Soros' groups trying to support what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 23:20

Budging the numbers, I have a piece on before it's news about that.

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

Yes. Absolutely. You they used to write, oh, you don't have to believe just guns.

SPEAKER_00: 23:30

That you Soros DAs pleaing away the gun. You claim to care so much about gun violence, but then you plea away the gun charges so you can let the criminal back out on the street with a lesser plea charges.

SPEAKER_01: 23:47

Well, I mean, we just had an example of the New York DA where he dropped charges on a on uh a left activist for attacking a right activist. And so, I mean, that would never happen if the roles were reversed. And when that's the standard, if you apply that as the standard, they're doing something because of the left versus right. If they wouldn't do it because of the white right versus left, then you know it's politics. Yeah, politics have gotten too far. We always have politics in these discussions, but it's gotten too far. When you can't even admit that you've got criminal, illegal aliens in the country, then we can't have a discussion. We can't have a compromise with you.

SPEAKER_00: 24:25

It's gone from reasonable, somewhat honest political discussion to the left being completely delusional, ideological. They refuse to recognize and admit to reality. You can't have a discussion with someone who doesn't have an equal basis in any form of reality. Now, back to but back before the bail reform and the need to undo that, because it this relates Rudy Giuliani broken windows policy, it relates it directly to the bail situation. If you arrest, prosecute, and put away people for the smaller crimes, people don't usually go from zero to murder. Some do, but most, right? If you show criminals your soft on criminals, they've got no reason to stop committing crimes. And majority of the crimes are committed by a small number. And if you locked up that small number, indeed, most crime would evaporate overnight. Yes?

SPEAKER_01: 25:38

Yes, we have probably we have the same small group of people committing probably 60 or 70 percent of a crime in an area, and I agree with that. The broken windows theory is a proven theory for fighting crime. I mean, it's not something that was created by Rudy Giuliani, it's something we teach in our colleges in our criminology classes about how to fight crime. The reason why it was attacked in New York was because it was so effective.

SPEAKER_00: 26:03

And he had an R by his name.

SPEAKER_01: 26:06

Yes, and he had an R by his name. But because it was so effective, they filed suits. And, you know, what people forget or don't know is ultimately the use of uh the broken windows theory was upheld in court, but that was many years after it had stopped being used. And, you know, we've got a push now to try to bring it back in certain areas because look at Portland, look in Seattle, where you know, the president just called out the National Guard, or I guess the Department of Secretary of the Department of War just called him out, but the Trump is sending troops into into into that area because Antifa has taken over that area. They were like, oh, we don't have a crime problem. No, you have. You've turned over, you are allowing Antifa to decide what what takes place in your city, and you're bowing down to them every day. I mean, we have we had that happen in Seattle in 2020 because of George Floyd. They had the chop zone where they where they just blocked off this area and they wouldn't allow the police to come in. And so, I mean, there's been studies of that. And for that 20-something days, crime increased 178% compared to other areas, and even in the two-block area around it, crime was up like 70-something percent. And then the whole area, precinct area, crime increased increased 25% over those 20-something days. So, I mean, we have laid bare this argument from the activists, we need to, you know, get rid of the police, we'll be safer without police. That's a lie, and it and there's no science to support it, and which is true for a lot of their criminal justice reform bail reform movement, and it's finding the truth is very difficult.

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

Yeah, and uh other points, New York City and San Francisco, Chinatown. There are literally areas Democrats have given over areas to the Chinese government to have their own CCP uh stations, which aren't upholding American laws, they're holding up the Chinese, you must infiltrate, spy, and report back to China laws.

SPEAKER_01: 28:22

Isn't that strange how when that story first came out, you were a conspiracy theorist, you were a nut job for even suggesting that? And it took Trump being elected president to come out and admit that was taking place and he was ending it. I mean, isn't that crazy that I mean we've gone from oh you're a nut job conspiracy theorist for recommending that or suggesting that that's happening to yeah, it was happening.

SPEAKER_00: 28:49

Yeah, well, time has flown. Uh, I'm gonna start to so uh back to the bottom line. We both agree, and I think a lot of people agree, it's for power and control purposes, those on the left refuse to deal in the effectiveness of broken windows, as you said, and that no cash bail is a major fail. You keep letting criminals out, they keep committing more crimes.

SPEAKER_01: 29:20

It's that simple. Well, it's it is that simple. When you there's no other release mechanism that performs as successfully as the private industry. So when you try all these other experiments, they fail so drastically because they have such high failure to peer rates. And as the high failure to peer rates increase, you have backlogs in cases, backlogs in cases, put pressure on judges to dismiss cases. When you dismiss a case so there's no consequences on the defendant, they see that as a green light to commit more crime. It's that simple.

SPEAKER_00: 29:53

Amen. Uh you all now see why we preempted Johnny B. Good to have Ken W. Good. My uncle, my uncle would be so proud. Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you for appearing, Ken W. Good. Do you have a website for people to find and reach out and all that good stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 30:19

Sure. For more information, they can go to our website, pbtx.com, which is the professional bondsman of Texas. So pbtx.com. We have a blog where we highlight important criminal justice stories, and we also have a podcast. There's a link on our menu, but you it's called the Bell Post. So you can also just go to theBellpost.com. And we talk everything criminal justice. I mean, I think we're ranked in the top of the criminal justice podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 30:46

And I also I see on an email. Email exchange. Oh, this is Elliot saying he is media distr.com. We don't want people going there. So E D T X dot com and what was the other one again? I didn't read it.

SPEAKER_01: 31:04

Thebailpost.com.

SPEAKER_00: 31:06

Bell or Bale?

SPEAKER_01: 31:08

Bale. B-A-I-L.

SPEAKER_00: 31:10

Okay, there's that. See that accent problem again, right? The Bale. I'm sorry. I didn't read the post. The Balepost.com.com. Okay, that to me, I think, is the important one. Thank you, Ken W Good, for your time. I greatly appreciate it. Normally I would say, I don't know when this will air. I got a whole lot of interviews over there piled up. It will be a while, but sorry, others, I'm bumping up, Ken. This will probably air early October because this is so timely. It has to get out. I will let you know, of course, when it drops.

SPEAKER_01: 31:55

Thank you very much, sir.

SPEAKER_00: 31:57

Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help. Thank you for having tuned in for Christitutionalist Politics Show. If you haven't already, please check out my primary internationally available book, Terror Strikes, coming soon to a city near you. Available anywhere books are sold. If you have locally run bookstores still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind: over time the fancy high production items will come. But for now, for starters it's just you as a very appreciated listener by me, all substance, no flaw, just straight to key discussion points. A show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian U.S. constitutional influence. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care. God bless.