All Defendants Should Be Guaranteed a Reasonable Bail

For organizational purposes, I will by combining all the 8th amendment points into 1 point, rather than 3. 1)Innocent until found guilty. My opponent points to a supreme court ruling, Coffin v U. S. [1], to argue that we have the presumption of innocence. Since my opponent has appealed to the supreme court as a legitimate authoritative figure, I have the option of either calling out an appeal to authority or accepting it. I choose to accept it and would like to point out U. S. v Salerno [2], where the supreme court rules that preventative bail (meaning no bail) does not violate the constitution, saying "We reject the proposition that the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the government from pursuing other admittedly compelling interests through regulation of pretrial release. " If my opponent chooses to accept the supreme court as a legitimate authority, then he must accept their ruling on bail. If he back tracks and rejects their authority, then he must forfeit the Presumption of Innocence. If he tries to maintain PoI while rejecting the court's ruling on bail, he has then committed a special pleading fallacy. 2)8th Amendment My opponent states that there is a constitutional right attached to bail, however, there is not. There is only a constitutional right to prevent "excessive bail," not a right to bail outright. Since there is no right to bail, the analogy holds. However, whether there is a "right" or not does not actually disprove the analogy, since "rights" had nothing to do with the analogy. It merely showed that saying something is not for sale (the equivalent of saying "no bail") is not the same as saying something has unlimited price or value (or saying that it is more than $500 trillion). My opponent is trying to twist a logical distinction into an ethical one (by claiming that there is a "right"). 3)Primary focus on cash My opponent accepts that alternative methods, other than cash can be applied. This causes his entire argument to fail, because there is not a conversion from one currency into another. Example, if the judge were to impose a bail of "7 days" (meaning the defendant would be held for seven days, maybe to allow the victim time to recover and get safe, or what not), then $500 trillion would not be sufficient to meet bail. Therefore, my opponent's analogy would state that "7 days" is unreasonable. Let's say the bail is reduced to merely "1 hour. " The same holds true, that $500 trillion would not be sufficient, and so a bail of "1 hour" is unreasonable, even though my opponent has accepted it. Now, let's say that bail is twisted around the other way, since my opponent accepts "time" as a legitimate condition for bail. Let's say a bail of $200 was set, in that case, "10 years" would not cover that, and so $200 would have to be deemed as "unreasonable. " By this very standard, any bail instantly becomes "unreasonable" so the analogy is defeated through reductio ad absurdum. This can also be reduced further by stating that the very act of being arrested for even a single second is "unreasonable. " 4)"Very strict conditions for release" My opponent argues that courts can "impose very strict conditions for his or her release" and lists several of them. Such as requiring them to stay home, and placing police around their home 24/7. This is an obvious double standard from special pleading. If my opponent argues that keeping someone trapped in a cell before conviction violates their rights, then he must also argue that keeping someone trapped in their home before conviction violates those same rights. The only difference is location, but the restriction on freedom is equal. In Summary We find that we cannot accept presumption of innocence without also accepting that no bail is not excessive bail (thanks to the supreme court). We find that since cash is not the only form of bail, "no bail" cannot possibly be excessive without the entire bail process being excessive and so that argument fails. We still see that unconstitutional =/= unreasonable. [1] . http://www.constitution.org... [2] . http://supreme.justia.com...