Ron Sylvester, a retired magistrate judge, says bail bonds are unnecessary in most nonviolent cases. Text messages have proven sufficient to get people to return to court. (Getty Images)
Magistrate Judge Ron Sylvester’s story about the need to eliminate cash bonds in nonviolent cases begins with two QuikTrip hot dogs, one actual dog, and a man with mental health and addiction issues struggling to survive.
Setting bonds, said Sylvester, who retired in April after five years on the bench, doesn’t protect communities. It can, however, mock justice as it did for a then-74-year-old Thomas Wimberly, who spent 71 days in jail for stealing hot dogs he gave to his dog, Smokey Bear.
Retired Magistrate Judge Ron Sylvester (Kansas Judicial Branch)
Bail bonds, in Sylvester’s estimation, are regressive, exploitative legal system versions of payday loans that prey on people like Wimberly. Sylvester, a journalist for 40 years who covered courts for the Wichita Eagle, shared a story he’d written almost 20 years ago.
It was early July in 2006 when Wimberly put Smokey Bear into a shopping cart and headed to a downtown Wichita car show. On the way home, he stopped at a QuikTrip and grabbed two hot dogs for the hungry Smokey Bear.
But as Wimberly prepared the last hot dog, he saw Smokey Bear climbing out of the cart and left the store without paying. A moonlighting police officer saw Wimberly leave without paying the $2.11 he owed.
By the time the officer reached Wimberly, Smokey Bear had gulped the hot dogs.
Wimberly was booked on theft but his case was dismissed.
Sylvester said Wimberly thought it was over. Not close.
Wimberly had two previous misdemeanor thefts on his record — one more than a decade old. This third misdemeanor became a felony under Kansas law. The city sent the case to the district attorney’s office.
The summons the D.A.’s office sent to attend a hearing came back undelivered. So, when Wimberly didn’t show, a judge issued a bench warrant that sent Wimberly to jail on what for him was a whopping $5,000 bond.
Sylvester said bail bond services typically post a bond for 10% of the amount, but $500 exceeded what Wimberly drew in a month from Social Security. At the time of his arrest, Wimberly lived on $448 a month.
Jurors took two days off work when the case went to trial. They heard the evidence and found Wimberly not guilty. Sylvester said some jurors were irate the case went to trial.
“It was stupid,” presiding juror Krysti Mason, 21, said of Wimbley’s trial in the Eagle article
With the national conversation now about cracking down on crime, it isn’t wrong to wonder where this narrative that the nation is soft on crime comes from. Our nation has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its criminals. We are tough on crime.
It’s time we got smart on crime. At roughly $50 a day for 71 days, the system spent a minimum of $3,550 on Wimberly’s $2.11 hot dog heist.
Sylvester said Wimberly, who also suffered from mental health issues, got Smokey Bear back and that Wimberly often carried the newspaper story with him, basking in his 15 minutes of fame.
Wimberly has since died, but his story and the cruel system of bail bonds live on.
The bonds are unnecessary, Sylvester said of most nonviolent cases. Text messages have proven sufficient to get people to return to court. The bond industry, he said, preys on fear, claiming bond-less defendants would be dangers to the community.
“Yeah, with them on the mean streets of Kingman, we aren’t safe,” he said sarcastically of the south-central Kansas town where he served as a magistrate. “All (the current system) does is allow rich, dangerous people to roam the community.”
Sylvester often offered defendants “OR bonds,” or own recognizance bonds. Defendants paid only if they didn’t show up for court dates. Besides, most of the people who appeared in front of him needed help, not punishment.
“About 90 to 95% of the cases I heard had a mental health or addiction component or both,” he said. “A lot of this has to do with the failure to pass Medicaid.”
He appeared in a Wall Street Journal article about Pratt Regional Medical Center suing many of its patients because it was the only way to generate the revenue necessary to keep the hospital open.
The Journal featured Sylvester in a story last year about how 95% of the civil cases he was hearing were brought by the hospital. In July and August 2023, four of every five sheriff-delivered court summonses in Pratt County were from the hospital.
“By December,” the story said, “it had sued some 400 people in a county of 9,000 — more than it had in the past five years combined.”
Sylvester said people who appeared in front of him pleaded for help.
“I’ve told anyone who would listen that if you want to be tough on crime, you should work to properly fund community mental health and addiction treatments in every Kansas town. You do that, and you will significantly cut crime, especially in rural areas.”
And maybe not spend thousands of dollars on bonds and hot dog larceny.
Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.