No Bail - Court Changes Rules

Wheaton Hills Sportsman said:

They have been using the system based on primarily relying on community ties and release on recognizance in D.C. for decades, it has been a total success, they have next to no crime at all. Of course that nearly total lack of crime in D.C. may be due to gun control, no criminals can access guns in D.C. because they have awesome gun control. If you heard anything different is was just fake news.

Wait a minute, maybe I got that backwards.

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Name Taken said:

Not really.

Bail in this state has always been inconsistent with folks getting released with heavy charges and some folks being held on minor charges with no real rhyme or reason.

Commissioners are a mix of the populace here in MD with some being liberal in their views and others being Conservative.

There have been articles wrote about it and plenty of defense attorneys complaining their clients are now being held W/O bail where before they would get a high dollar amount bail that they could pay (with under the table money).

The politicians in Maryland want to re-write the rules. They haven't had luck passing their agenda in the past few years. They clearly plan on changing that. I have no doubt that their end plan is to have more folks on the street and less held but I'm also certain they are willing to have a few held W/O bail to get their point across.

Look at how this was initially done. It could get traction in the legislation so the "Judges of the state" so to speak brought about the change. Oddly enough the "judges of the state" and many of the states legislators draw a short line to one another.

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Did you read the post?

From the story - "Maryland's highest court adopted a landmark rule Tuesday aimed at ending the practice of holding criminal defendants in jail before trial when they cannot afford bail."

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It says, that they will not hold people in jail, just because they cannot afford bail.

So bail is set, defendant cannot pay it, so let them go anyway.

Pinecone said:

Did you read the post?



It says, that they will not hold people in jail, just because they cannot afford bail.

So bail is set, defendant cannot pay it, so let them go anyway.

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That isn't how it works regardless of what the article says.

The change was it is illegal to post a bail knowing (at least on paper) the defendant can't afford it.

So say you do a Robbery and are a drug dealer with 30k in cash reserve but no verifiable income. Before a bail on that charge would be say 250k pending several things. On paper there is no way that guy could post that however they would post it and be on the streets. Now that bail, taking into consideration of the persons ability to pay it (on paper remember) would be "illegal".

So the judges and commissioners have two options. You take that Robbery charge and simply hold them without bail (this is happening a lot) citing they are a threat to the public and they may have one or two previous FTA's so you are inclined to believe they may skip court again....OR you give him a 15k dollar bail because that is a reasonable amount of money for this gentleman to be able to pay.

With in the last two years they tried to change the system in the legislature and has failed. They tried to take the person out of it and allow a computer program to do it and it failed.

So they changed the rules on the administrative side of it to back log the system. More folks are going to be held without bail where before they would have had a high dollar amount. This will cause crisis among folks and there will be a push to re-write it in the legislature as opposed to Frosh reinterpreting the law.

I don't really care what the news article says. I see it first hand and have followed their attempts to change the bail system. The bail bond industry is fairly decent at lobbying due to the amount of money involved. They are creating a crisis to come and fix in a year or two that's all.

What purpose does it serve to release folks and hold them without bail as you think? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Quotes are from this link... http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/news/state/bs-md-bail-reform-effects-20170225-story.html

So in some jurisdictions the amount of folks being released with no bail has fallen in half but in the busiest court district in the state it's only fallen by 10 percent. But the amount of people held WITHOUT BAIL has DOUBLED state wide. Gee it's almost like someone who posted in this thread had an actual clear understanding about what was happening. So while the amount of people recoged in some places has been cut in half the largest court system in the state only saw a 10% increase in folks recoged. Yet the entire state saw a 50% increase in folks held without bail.

"In some jurisdictions, the percentage of cases in which court officials have ordered cash bail has fallen in the last four months by more than half, the data from Maryland District Court shows. In Baltimore, the drop has been more than 10 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of defendants held without bail has nearly doubled statewide."





And then we get this tid bit from Frosh. Who has lobbied for bail reform and since it failed he addressed it administratively and this will eventually force the legislation to re-write the laws. He all but says it in his quote. If he felt it was a constitutional issue from the start why didn't he address it that way immediately? It was just once he didn't get his way he decided to change the rules which will force the delegation to review this if not this year next year.

"Frosh said he does support "a more robust pretrial system," but he's glad to see judges and commissioners changing their habits before such a system is in place.

"We saw a problem that poor people were being locked up for being poor. That had to be addressed," he said. "It's no secret that I supported legislation that would have created a statewide pretrial system, too. I think that's desirable. But we had to address the constitutional issue."



I believe the end game here is to keep more criminals on the street for some unknown reason once the legislation re-writes the bail system. I believe it is to take heat of the judges and attorneys who now become fall guys for their decisions. Once it's a computer program that decides you won't see the city Police Commish going on TV questioning the judge. It could really be something that simple and ego driven.

They changed the rules to force legislation changes and create more folks that are going to be held WITHOUT BAIL in order to upset folks and force the legislation to change the entire system. That has been the purpose from day one IMHO and this article all but says that if you read in between the lines.

I wonder: Due to the increase of HWOB, are more "Time Served" sentences being handed down?

Name Taken said:

I think this will just cause a bigger back log of prisoners.

Instead of giving the unemployed, non homeowner, not married, father of 2 a bail of say 30k for Robbery they are going to say that would not be legal since he has no means of meeting that payment. So he'll be held without bail until his court date.

IMHO this was done on purpose to back log the system so they can really re-write the bail system. There were talks about it for the last several years and never really got a big push. When they start seeing all these folks held without bail it's going to cause a stir and they can re-write the entire thing taking money out of it all together.

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WOW....It is almost like someone had a crystal ball.

http://www.wbaltv.com/article/numbers-raise-questions-about-move-to-reform-bail-in-maryland/20955205

The link goes on to say more and more Baltimore City arrests are being held without bail for minor crimes despite arrests being low.

They are going to create a stir and Annapolis is going to get to re-write the bail system. They have created their own problem to fix since they couldn't get support to change the previous system.

The Democratic machine is real. Put their voters in jail just to stir the pot so they can get their agenda's done.