August 22, 2016

Emperor's people claim holding people accused of crimes in jail if they can't make bail is unconstitutional???

Something serious happened.  It happened last February, but since the emperor's people control what the "press" decides is worth noting, we're just now learning about it.
 
For the first time in history the emperor's laughably-misnamed "Justice" department has taken the official position that keeping people in jail if they can't post bail is unconstitutional.

In a legal filing called a "friend of the court" brief, the emperor's minions claimed "Bail practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay for their release violate the Fourteenth Amendment."

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that no citizen can be denied "life, liberty or property, without due process of law."  Of course setting bail for a defendant IS "due process of law," but remember this filing is from an organization whose head--Attorney-General Loretta Lynch--was unwilling to even say that perjury is against the law!  With shit like that coming from the top official, minor things like claiming that keeping possible murderers in jail if they can't post bond is unconstitutional is small potatoes.

The DOJ's brief explained that courts must consider the defendant's ability to pay.

It's likely that none of you considers this to be significant.  Let me tell you why it's very critical, and what it means:

If the government's position prevails it will mean that no one can be denied bail if any person in U.S. history, accused of the same crime, was allowed to post bail.  And what that means is that every person accused of a crime will simply claim they can't afford bail.  Which means that if the DOJ prevails, legal systems will be forced to release them with absolutely no incentive for them to appear for trial.

Get it yet?

Do you think this is a good idea?  But more generally, the position represents a total, radical change of the governing philosophy of the federal government, from "equal opportunity" to equal outcomes.  If adopted, this will ensure the end of the U.S. experiment.

Now I'm totally sympathetic to the idea that if someone throws a cigarette out their car window and gets jailed, and can't afford a couple of hundred bucks of bail, and ends up sitting in the slammer til Monday, that's a huge irritation.  As you can surely guess, that's not what I'm concerned about.  Instead it's the absolute certainty that if the appeals court doesn't slap this down, it will have the effect I noted above.

If you want this outcome, vote Democrat.

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