Bounty hunter
Overview
A bounty hunter captures fugitive
Fugitive
A fugitive is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from private slavery, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals...

s for a monetary reward
Money
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...

 (bounty
Bounty (reward)
A bounty is a payment or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money...

). Other names, mainly used in the United States, include bail enforcement agent and fugitive recovery agent.
In the United States legal system, the 1873 U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 case Taylor v. Taintor
Taylor v. Taintor
Taylor v. Taintor, 83 U.S. 366 , was a United States Supreme Court case that is commonly referred to as having decided a person into whose custody a person accused of a crime is remanded as part of the accused's bail has sweeping rights to recover that person...

,
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 accuser's bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...

 has sweeping rights to that person (although this may have been accurate at the time the decision was reached, the portion cited was obiter dictum
Obiter dictum
Obiter dictum is Latin for a statement "said in passing". An obiter dictum is a remark or observation made by a judge that, although included in the body of the court's opinion, does not form a necessary part of the court's decision...

 and has no binding precedential value).
 
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