Cash bail is really bad for non-dangerous people, and I think our local system has made some real progress on that.
I can't speak to the Eighth Amendment issues.
Isn't it the case that when someone gets convicted of a serious crime, the get sent to Huntsville, or somewhere else in the state system? That most people in a local jail are for pretrial detention seems feature not bug.
1-3 years for pretrial detention is pretty long. Maybe additional judges, court staff, and public defenders would be a good idea.
It doesn't seem to be obviously a violation of any of those conditions. It's not a cruel and unusual punishment because it isn't a punishment - they haven't been convicted of anything. It's not an excessive fine. And there's no way of knowing whether they're in jail as a result of excessive bail, or whether they are in jail because they've been refused bail altogether.
Charging people for an ankle monitor seems like pointless extortion. Jail time is more expensive per person-day than a high-class hotel, at least in this country. (Young offenders' institutions are more expensive than Eton.)
Letting people out on bail is therefore saving the county vast amounts of money. You could almost argue they should be paying people to wear ankle monitors, except that it would set up a perverse incentive.
They do have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, which generally means "within 100 days of charge" or so - there seem to be a lot of them not hitting that mark, which is rather a red flag.
And there's no way of knowing whether they're in jail as a result of excessive bail, or whether they are in jail because they've been refused bail altogether.
This seems reasonably easy to ascertain, by looking at their income.
1-3 years for pretrial detention is pretty long. Maybe additional judges, court staff, and public defenders would be a good idea.
We actually just got our first public defender, after a very long campaign for one.
" It's not a cruel and unusual punishment because it isn't a punishment"
This is perverse but sounds like something from a recent Thomas or Alito opinion. If you're guilty punishment is justified; if you're innocent you're not being punished for anything so there are no constitutional protections.
It seems uncontroversial that if people in, say, the upper third of income can usually pay bail and people lower can't and are imprisoned, the bail system is excessive by design. In theory all bail is supposed to be targeted to ability to pay. But the courts haven't caught up in mandating systemic changes, I believe. The California Supreme Court has made some directives starting 2021, but fixing such a complex system may prove beyond a court's capacity.
(I've probably related this before, but California did try to eliminate cash bail legislatively in 2019. It started out as a progressive initiative, then it got major gubernatorial amendments near the end that soured a lot of the advocacy groups on it. The bail bonds companies put a veto referendum on the ballot, the campaign against was anemic with some progressives even joining the pro-cash-bail crowd, and the veto succeeded.)
Is the sticking point (not in California specifically, but in general) that excessive bail is not required? That you're allowed to just sit in jail and lose your job and apartment if you so choose?
No, that seems more hair-splitting than even our courts do. Pay-or-be-imprisoned is more or less what bail is, so "requiring" it doesn't mean anything other than giving that choice. (Originally the word meant conditions-of-release, and I think still does in the UK, but here bail = cash bail.)
That most people in a local jail are for pretrial detention seems feature not bug.
Yes, pretrial detention is the primary function of jails as opposed to prisons in the US system. The problem driving the long stays, in addition to the use of cash bail, is really the limited capacity of the courts to try people.
As with many things, Alaska is an exception here. We don't really have jails in this sense, just like we don't have counties; all correctional institutions are run by the state, which handles both pre-trial detention and post-sentencing incarceration.
The problem driving the long stays, in addition to the use of cash bail, is really the limited capacity of the courts to try people.
But of course, you can cheaply solve the long stays without addressing the limited capacity of the courts. (Not that anyone here is arguing otherwise.)
IANAL but it seems to me the Constitutional issue here is being "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" (5th Amendment) plus the right to a speedy trial (6th). I'm sure Clarence Thomas can construct meanings of "due process", "speedy trial" and "excessive bail" such that you can be held for rolling through a stop sign for 50 years on a $10 million bond, but surely any reasonable interpretation can't be squared with the results in the OP? I wonder if the likely length of pre-trial detention is ever a factor in setting bail?
Long pre-trial detention is also how courts coerce accused people into accepting plea bargains where the prosecutor has very deliberately chosen to over-charge them. It's a reminder that the old "Law and Order" opening about "the people have two representatives in the criminal justice sytem: the police and the prosecution" completely misses the boat that those two operate hand in glove with the judicial system against accused people. Except when accused people can afford lawyers to fight back.
13.1 is the big issue. It's unconscionable that the price of going to trial is years of imprisonment.
Ultimately there's no constitutional language that will eliminate subjectivity, politics, and motivated reasoning from the equation, and whoever wrote the Eighth Amendment knew that.
(The Fourteenth too - they knew it would only be effective if they held political power.)
New York State eliminated bail requirements for a number of lower-level crimes, and now 'most everyone who doesn't put any thought into it blames that (and Democrats, of course) for the increases in shoplifting etc. which have been seen nationwide over the past few years. It's exhausting. But I'm still glad that low income people are being imprisoned without trial less often.
13 Then the content of the show was a whole lot of hand in glove.
I've no doubt that there's a lot of strategic overcharging going on. I also no doubt that lots of behavior seems on initial investigation to check more than one criminal code box. Whether or not there's a missing element -- or maybe an element you don't find out right away you have evidentiary issues with -- means you are going to have to check as many boxes as might work, even if you're not just trying to create leverage.
Bigger Government is the cure for a lot of things, and addressing limited court capacity, both civil and criminal, seems to me to be among the lowest hanging fruit.
16 We elected a slate of municipal judges in 2021 who were dedicated to changing the bail/incarceration culture, and a bunch of others ways that th law punishes poor people. Our county attorney and prosecutor were already on board with that, so for a while there it really mattered whether you were arrested by the police or by the sheriff.
Can't do anything statewide on that: we have a significant faction who would, I think, rather bring back Old Testament punishments than do anything that might be helpful to defendants. And, no, they're not interested in jubilee years, or any of that good Old Testament stuff.
Are folks reading the DC Circuit opinion on the Trump gag order? I'll summarize: 'man that guy sucks, but he does have some free speech rights.' They considerably narrowed the order.
Relevant to the OP: https://www.capolicylab.org/providing-early-legal-counsel-reduces-jail-time-and-improves-case-outcomes/
19: I'm reading it. As defined the start it looks like a significantly higher bar, but in the meat they seem to acknowledge that a lot of what Trump has been saying does meet that high bar - they emphasize the ample evidence that he knows when he calls some individual out they will be threatened by his flying monkeys. Wouldn't clear normal First Amendment prior restraint standards, but they lay out how a trial makes it different.
(Sam Sheppard's case is frequently cited - apparently one thing happening in that trial was both sides were releasing lots of prejudicial information to the press, and the Supreme Court in that case said the court could and should have barred such release.)
In other judicial news, Hunter Biden may be just a sideshow, but the DOJ summarized with an entertaining table (on page 13) "approximate expenditures that the Defendant made instead of paying his taxes" over four years, which starts:
ATM / Cash Withdrawal: $1,644,004
Various Women: $683,212
and further down
Adult Entertainment: $188,960
That last is the most surprising to me. It's been discussed here long ages past how easy it is to make infinite money disappear on hookers and blow, but porn? A little money goes a long way there.
It's probably go carts. Lots of those don't allow children.
#4 was $309k for "Tuition/Education/Extracurricular". So he was trying to improve himself, at least!
22 last: The NYT Ethicist column currently has the wonderful clickbait headline, "My 70-year old mom spends too much on porn." It turns out that the mom is on a limited budget and she started subscribing to 4 premium porn channels which makes for a quite exorbitant cable bill. The letter writer asks if it would be OK to discuss with their mother the vast quantity of free porn available on the internet.
Maybe he was paying "adult entertainment" stars for their education.
They do have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, which generally means "within 100 days of charge" or so - there seem to be a lot of them not hitting that mark, which is rather a red flag.
The claim locally (which I expect is somewhat true, and also overstated) is that a significant percentage of the people held for a long period of time have had a hearing in which they were found incompetent to stand trial; a judge has ordered that they be sent to Western State to receive treatment (in the hopes that they would be competent for trial), but there can be a long wait before there is space available for treatment.
25: It would be kinder to just target a Facebook ad for pornhub to her.
That's a lot of ATM withdrawals. Maybe he's why the ATMs by me now give out fifties?
Presumably the ATM money was for drugs?
Maybe ATM stands for something else, like "At the Mineshaft", and that's an adult entertainment business.
Once you get used to the quantity and resolution of paid porn, it's hard to go back to the utter mishmash that's free. But you can get tons of stuff on a paysite for like $140/year, vs. the $160/month this aged mother was spending.
Does $140/year get you movies with titles that are puns on real movies?
33: Didn't you hear? Those are all gone now. It's all "[Property Name]: The Porn Parody" or "This Ain't [Property Name]". No creativity.
Seems like an opportunity there for an innovative entrepreneur.
With the NYT running columns on how to save money on your porn, there's probably no way to profit with higher quality writing.
Puns don't actually improve the quality of writing.
Pun titles are the mark of an artist, like how the "Sanitized for your protection" band is the mark of a luxury hotel.
I don't want to sound judgy, but $700,000 on prostitution over four years seems unhealthy.
I thought that one thread years ago killed the pun porn title genre.
seems unhealthy.
No its perfectly good cardio, but definitely more expensive than a gym membership.
Anyway, this whole Hunter Biden indictment seems politically motivated to me. They are just prosecuting rich people for evading taxes now? I don't buy it.
I was told the justice system had limited capacity.
The kids here keep doing what I think are victory displays they see in baseball, but are also clearly simulated sex acts.
On topic, because it's about how America sucks.
Now that pitchers are no longer allowed to complete their taxes between pitches, baseball players needed another way to express themselves.
45: that sounds more like they are imitating rock or hip-hop music stars. Or possibly imitating athletes that are imitating rock stars.
Is "rock star" a category anymore? Genuinely asking.
45, 48 just last year, infamously https://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/martinez-explains-lewd-golden-glove-trophy-celebration-argentina-world-cup/blt84db3069432c6623
49: Practically nothing new on the Billboard charts is "rock" anymore but I'd have to say Taylor Swift qualifies. What is a rock star, anyway? Singer-songwriter + guitar + drums + success - country? (Aside: what's the effective difference between contemporary country and rock besides an accent?)
Rock is dead but the phrase "rock star" lives on. For example if I do a good job finding information on a topic, my co-worker might compliment me by saying, "You're a rock star!"
I just won $300 from the slot machine at the grocery store. Woo-hoo.
I'm thinking of applying to be president of Penn. I'm already in state so moving expenses would be low. And I have a complete unwillingness to explain my views to Congress
Plus, without a PhD, it's hard to be attacked as an elitist.
It's hard to beat the down-to-earth nature of statistical consulting. It's so proletariat it hurts.
Maybe the pain is my temporary crown.
Anyway, Gaza wasn't part of Isreal, Biblical speaking, so Isreal taking over Gaza won't get us any closer to the end of the world.
I'm trying to find a compromise position where the world still ends, but Isreal can't send the assholes to seize houses in the West Bank.
But then why am I having a guy come next week to put in a new bathroom? Maybe trying to be sure the world ends is a bad idea.
My high school religion class was really deficient in school explaining how to make the world end. I guess that's what happens when you learn about eschatology in rural Nebraska. They did make some poor rabbi drive 3.5 hours from Omaha so we knew Judaism was still a going concern.
Not that the rabbi was telling us how to make the world end either. He was probably Reform.
When the kid got hit by the Range Rover, the Orthodox Jewish guy (something very Orthodox given his hat) said to take a picture of the driver and I didn't because I was on the phone with 911, but he was right. The driver did leave the scene.
There's probably more to Judaism than ending the world and suspecting black drivers of fleeing the scene of accidents. But I forgot.
People should really stop me when I've been drinking.
Maybe we want you to be president of Penn.