DA: Over 70% of offenders released on $0 bail in one California county were re-arrested

People released from jail under Yolo County’s “$0 bail” policy went on to be re-arrested 70% of the time, according to a new report released by the District Attorney’s Office. In April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Judicial Council took the step of imposing a statewide emergency bail schedule, ending the requirement of cash bail for low-level offenders in a bid to reduce the spread of the virus among inmates. The order set bail at $0 for most misdemeanor and lower-level felony charges. The emergency order was lifted in June 2020, though individual counties were permitted to make their own decisions on whether to keep $0 bail in place.

Yolo County opted to keep the measure in place until June 2021. As a result, Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s office conducted an analysis of those re-arrests while the policy was in place.

Out of 595 people who were released on $0 bail during that period, 420 were re-arrested, with 123 of them arrested for violent crimes, with charges ranging from murder and attempted murder to kidnapping, robbery, carjacking and domestic violence. That included Marcus Trull, a 22-year-old who was arrested in connection with a shooting that left two dead in Old Sacramento in July 2021. He was released from jail in Yolo County but failed to appear to face felony charges of possessing a loaded gun and possessing a concealed gun in connection with an April 2020 case. Trull also failed to appear in Sacramento Superior Court for two charges in an October 2020 DUI case. Trull remains in custody in the Sacramento County Main Jail as he awaits a plea hearing Sept. 20 in the Old Sacramento case with co-defendant Cedric Salcedo, according to court records.

“When over 70% of the people released under mandated $0 bail policies go on to commit additional crimes, including violent offenses such as robbery and murder, there is simply no rational public safety-related basis to continue such a practice post-pandemic, especially in light of the increasing violent crime rates across California,” Reisig said in a statement.

Click here to read the full article at the Sacramento Bee

San Fran Lawsuit Challenges CA Cash Bail System

Photo credit: Michael Coghlan via Flickr

Photo credit: Michael Coghlan via Flickr

The procedure of charging and posting cash bail has prompted a historic lawsuit out of San Francisco.

Evidence has been mounting for years that the bail system places the poor in an untenable position when they are arrested. As the Economist noted, “around 1,800 San Franciscans every year are detained before their trials because they are poor.” But a new case with unusual details has resulted in a class action suit that strikes at the heart of the practice. “Crystal Patterson didn’t have the cash or assets to post $150,000 bail and get out of jail after her arrest on an assault charge in October,” as the Associated Press recounted. “So Patterson, 39, promised to pay a bail bonds company $15,000 plus interest to put up the $150,000 bail for her, allowing her to go home and care for her ailing grandmother.”

That’s where things took a turn for the absurd. “The day after her release, the district attorney decided not to pursue charges,” the AP observed. “But Patterson still owes the bail bonds company. Criminal justice reformers and lawyers at a nonprofit legal clinic in the District say that is unconstitutionally unfair.”

According to the lawsuit, filed by the nonprofit group Equal Justice Under Law, “the due-process and equal-protection guarantees” contained in the 14th Amendment “have long prohibited imprisoning a person because of the person’s inability to make a monetary payment.”

Bail on trial

“Yet that is just what San Francisco’s bail schedule does,” the Economist added. “Even the city’s former sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, laments the injustice and inefficiency of its bail policy. Most inmates in its jails have been charged with minor crimes or misdemeanors like public urination or petty larceny and are at scant risk of ducking their trials and compounding their legal woes. Jailing these people before their trials costs the city. It would be cheaper and more humane, he suggests, to use pre-trial services like electronic monitoring to usher defendants back to court.”

The EJUL lawsuit was filed in October. “A judge will decide in next month whether to temporary suspend San Francisco’s bail system until the lawsuit is resolved,” according to the AP. The organization’s attorneys have suggested that the legal argument they have trained on San Francisco would have to apply across California as well if it is accepted in court. “Center lawyer Phil Telfeyan says if a judge strikes down San Francisco’s bail system, similar policies in the state’s 57 other counties will also have to be changed,” the wire reported.

Nationwide concern

As dismaying anecdotes have accumulated, cash bail has begun to encounter organized opposition outside California as well. “When Miguel Padilla landed in jail for driving with a suspended license, his fiancée scrambled to raise $1,000 in bail to get him out of New York City’s Rikers Island. They couldn’t come up with the cash,” as Take Part reported. “So the 35-year-old decided to plead guilty, rather than fight his case, to get back to his three kids as fast as possible. In the five days Padilla spent behind bars, he lost both of his low-wage jobs. After his release, he struggled to find another job — thanks to his new criminal record.”

Years of data has suggested Padilla’s problem is endemic. “In a 2011 report by the city’s Independent Budget Office, 79 percent of pretrial detainees were sent to Rikers because they couldn’t post bail right away,” wrote Maya Schenyar in a 2015 editorial at the New York Times. “Across the United States, most of the people incarcerated in local jails have not been convicted of a crime but are awaiting trial. And most of those are waiting in jail not because of any specific risk they have been deemed to pose, but because they can’t pay their bail.”

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com