Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris took aim Monday at the criminal justice system with her latest campaign plank, proposing to eliminate cash bail, private prisons and the death penalty.
Read moreThe Houston area’s top prosecutor sent her chief of staff to meet with local NAACP officials Thursday to assure them she supports bail reforms to keep poor misdemeanor arrestees out of jail, but she has concerns with a proposed settlement she says will endanger domestic violence victims.
Read moreThe city of San Francisco ended its stalemate Friday with pretrial detainees fighting the money bail system in the city.
Read moreIt’s been five months since U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers declared San Francisco’s bail schedule unconstitutional. But with talks on a replacement plan between the sheriff and attorneys representing pretrial detainees grinding to a halt, she’s fed up and willing to let political pressure force the local court and law enforcement to act.
Read moreThe Judicial Council of California approved $68 million Friday to fund pilot projects in 16 trial courts aimed at releasing more arrestees from jail while they await trial.
Read moreFacing an existential threat to their industry, bail agents are fighting back with a double-edged attack on a law that abolishes bail in California.
Read moreThe Second Circuit ruled that a defendant’s bail application was property denied, after he offered to pay for private armed security guards to supervise his home confinement, because the Bail Reform Act does not permit a system in which “defendants of lesser means are detained pending trial while wealthy defendants are released to self-funded private jail.”
Read moreSamuel Scott spent five days in the St. Louis city jail on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge claiming he hit his wife, Marcia Johnson. Days after a nonprofit posted his bail, she was dead.
Read moreThe Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal class action Sunday against six judges and the sheriff in Detroit, claiming the state’s largest district court unconstitutionally ignores a defendant’s ability to pay bail before they are detained.
Read moreAdopting a number of criminal-justice reforms with the 2020 budget, New York paved the way this weekend for the state to nix cash bail in the vast majority of cases.
Read moreIn an Oakland courtroom Thursday, a federal judge announced her plan to toss out the age-old practice of money bail for the City and County of San Francisco, saying it unfairly keeps impoverished arrestees behind bars.
Read moreA federal judge declined Wednesday to certify a class of pretrial detainees challenging the Cook County sheriff’s policy delaying the release of jail detainees, pending his personal review, even though they have already posted bail.
Read moreThe 10th Circuit upheld New Mexico’s bail reform efforts Monday, finding the rules that allow the state to either bar bail before arraignment or let more people go with no bail at all are constitutional.
Read moreA group of bail bond companies claim Harris County criminal court judges and the Harris County sheriff unconstitutionally changed bond requirements for individuals arrested on misdemeanor charges, threatening their business.
Read moreFacing extinction after lawmakers set wheels in motion to outlaw the practice in 2018, the bail industry has qualified a referendum that will ask voters whether to scrap or restore California’s money bail system.
Read moreA federal judge will likely rule San Francisco’s bail schedule unconstitutional, saying at a hearing Tuesday she could find no justification for the amount of money it demands arrestees pay to avoid sitting in jail.
Read moreA class action challenging Galveston County’s bail system as rigged to keep poor arrestees in jail has the same legitimate due process claims as litigation that transformed pretrial detention in Houston, a federal magistrate ruled Monday.
Read moreCalifornia ushered in a new era for criminal justice in August when Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that eliminates money bail as a way of keeping pretrial defendants being bars. On Friday, the Judicial Council met to hash out how the courts will actually put it into practice.
Read moreDallas County’s automatic money bail system violates poor defendants’ civil rights by not considering their ability to pay, a federal judge ruled late Thursday.
Read moreDespite the recent passage of a law banning the money bail system in California, a federal judge will still have to decide whether bail is constitutional in a legal challenge of the practice.
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