The state Supreme Court dealt a blow Thursday to California’s reliance on cash bail, ruling that judges can’t hold people before trial just because they can’t afford to pay for their release.
The court’s unanimous opinion finds that judges can’t simply rely on pre-determined bail amounts that functionally keep the less affluent behind bars, and concluded “that our Constitution prohibits pretrial detention to combat an arrestee’s risk of flight unless the court first finds, based upon clear and convincing evidence, that no condition or conditions of release can reasonably assure the arrestee’s appearance in court.”
The ruling is the latest step in a several-year struggle in California and nationally to upend the use of bail, which the court found often results in “wealth-based detention” that violates defendants’ equal protection and due process rights.
University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon said the ruling is potentially a “watershed” moment that enforces a defendant’s presumption of innocence.
“Grounding it firmly in the constitution makes it very clear that this is a right that is fundamental and it must be respected in trial courts in every part of the state,” she said. “That’s important because we were getting disparate outcomes depending on who the DA was and what kind of jurisdiction the person was in.”
Judges must now consider whether other requirements — such as electronic monitoring, pretrial check-ins or addiction treatment — can reasonably ensure a defendant won’t reoffend or skip court. And while judges may still impose bail, it can only be set at an amount the defendant can afford.
Justices made the ruling in the case of Kenneth Humphrey, a now 66-year-old Black man who faced $350,000 bail in 2017, when he was charged in San Francisco with robbery after taking $5 and a bottle of cologne from a neighbor. Humphrey’s public defender argued in court that he couldn’t afford that bail, and was held in jail unconstitutionally.
“Humphrey asks whether it is constitutional to incarcerate a defendant solely because he lacks financial resources,” the opinion says. “We conclude it is not.”
The opinion written by Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar cites research finding that large urban counties in California incarcerate people pretrial at higher rates than elsewhere in the country. And in this state, bail isn’t cheap. The median bail amount in California is $50,000, over five times the national median.
“Today’s historic decision affirms that people like our client Kenneth Humphrey, who bravely fought for his pretrial freedom, can no longer be locked up in jail simply for being poor and when they pose no threat to public safety," said San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju in a statement.