Opinion ID: 2761478
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Bail in the United States

Text: {26} The presumption that defendants should be released pending trial became widely adopted throughout the United States in both the state and federal systems. See Bail: An Ancient Practice Reexamined, supra, at 967. One commentator who surveyed the bail laws in each of the states found that forty-eight states have protected, by constitution or statute, a right to bail “by sufficient sureties, except for capital offenses when the proof is evident or the presumption great.” Matthew J. Hegreness, America’s Fundamental and Vanishing Right to Bail, 55 Ariz. L. Rev. 909, 916 (2013). States modeled these provisions on the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1682, which provided that “‘all Prisoners shall be Bailable by Sufficient Sureties, unless for capital Offenses, where proof is evident or the presumption great.’” See Carbone, supra, at 531-32 (“[T]he Pennsylvania provision became the model for almost every state constitution adopted after 1776.”). 9 {27} At the federal level, the first United States Congress established a statutory right to bail by enacting the Judiciary Act of 1789, which provided an absolute right to bail in noncapital cases and bail at the discretion of the judge in capital cases. See Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, § 33, 1 Stat. 73, 91; see also Caleb Foote, The Coming Constitutional Crisis in Bail: I, 113 U. Pa. L. Rev. 959, 971 (1965) (explaining that the “bail problem” was before the first Congress in the spring and summer of 1789). The first Congress also proposed that the states adopt the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which, like the New Mexico Constitution and English Bill of Rights, prohibits excessive bail. See U.S. Const. amend. VIII; N.M. Const. art. II, § 13; see also Browning-Ferris Indus. of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U.S. 257, 294 (1989) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (explaining that the first Congress based the Eighth Amendment “on Article I, § 9, of the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, which had in turn adopted verbatim the language of § 10 of the English Bill of Rights”). But unlike the New Mexico Constitution, the United States Constitution does not contain an explicit right to bail clause and guarantees only that “[e]xcessive bail shall not be required.” U.S. Const. amend. VIII; see Carlson v. Landon, 342 U.S. 524, 545-46 (1952) (explaining that the United States Constitution can be construed only as a prohibition against excessive bail in those cases in which it is proper to grant bail because the Eighth Amendment does not provide a “right to bail”). The United States Supreme Court has held that “[b]ail set at a figure higher than an amount reasonably calculated to fulfill [the] purpose [of adequately assuring the presence of the accused] is ‘excessive’ under the Eighth Amendment.” Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1, 5 (1951). As the Court explained, From the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73, 91, to the present Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 46(a)(1), 18 U.S.C.A., federal law has unequivocally provided that a person arrested for a non-capital offense shall be admitted to bail. This traditional right to freedom before conviction permits the unhampered preparation of a defense, and serves to prevent the infliction of punishment prior to conviction. See Hudson v. Parker, 1895, 156 U.S. 277, 285 . . . . Unless this right to bail before trial is preserved, the presumption of innocence, secured only after centuries of struggle, would lose its meaning. Id. at 4. {28} Despite the ancient origins and broad recognition of the right to bail in this country, studies of the administration of bail in the twentieth century raised a number of concerns about its widespread misuse. See Field Study, A Study of the Administration of Bail in New York City, 106 U. Pa. L. Rev. 693 (1958); Note, Compelling Appearance in Court: The Administration of Bail in Philadelphia, 102 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1031 (1954); Arthur L. Beeley, The Bail System in Chicago (1927). See generally Wayne H. Thomas, Jr., Bail Reform in America 3-19 (1976); Ronald Goldfarb, Ransom (1965); Foote, supra; Freed & Wald, supra, at 9-21. The studies all concluded that the system of money bail in the United States discriminates against indigent defendants who lack the financial resources to post bail. See, 10 e.g., Thomas, supra, at 11, 19 (“The American system of bail allows a person arrested for a criminal offense the right to purchase his release pending trial. Those who can afford the price are released; those who cannot remain in jail. . . . The requirement that virtually every defendant must post bail causes discrimination against defendants who are poor.”). Researchers also found that defendants incarcerated pending trial were held “under harsher conditions than those applied to convicted prisoners,” even though many of those defendants ultimately were either acquitted or given no sentence of imprisonment upon the disposition of their cases. Foote, supra, at 960. {29} These concerns were accompanied by criticism of the growing role commercial bail bond agents played in determining whether defendants would be released pending trial. See Notes, Preventive Detention Before Trial, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1489, 1490 (1966). No commercial bail bond industry existed in medieval England, where pretrial release was conditioned upon the accused securing a reputable friend or relative to personally assure the accused’s appearance for trial. See Thomas, supra, at 11-12; see also F.E. Devine, Commercial Bail Bonding 5 (1991) (explaining that sureties in eighteenth-century England “were viewed as actively exercising a friendly custody of the accused”). To the contrary, the English judicial system has always found the concept of commercial sureties repugnant. See generally Devine, supra, at 37 (explaining that, in the nineteenth century, the English common law treated an agreement to pay a surety for bail as an “unenforceable illegal contract contrary to the public interest” and, in the twentieth century, as a “crime of conspiracy to effect a public mischief” or a crime of “conspiracy to obstruct the court of justice”); id. at 45 (explaining that the English Bail Act of 1976 sets forth criminal penalties for agreeing to indemnify a surety in a criminal proceeding, effectively barring any commercial bail bond industry). England is not alone in its rejection of the commercial bail bond industry. “Viewed from an international perspective, the commercial bail bonding system has provoked an almost universally unfavorable reaction” in common law judicial systems, and “only one country, the Philippines, has adopted a commercial bail bonding system similar to the American system.” Id. at 15. {30} Contrary to this international trend, a commercial bail bond industry emerged in the early United States. Contributing factors included the near-absolute right to bail set forth in the Judiciary Act of 1789 and in most state constitutions, the unavailability of friends and relatives who might serve as personal sureties, and the ability of defendants to flee into the vast American frontier. See Thomas, supra, at 11-12. By the middle of the twentieth century in the United States, commercial bail bond companies who charged defendants a nonrefundable fee for their services, typically ten percent of the bond amount, frequently posted money bail. See id. at 11; Freed & Wald, supra, at 22-24. {31} A commercial bail bond may enable a defendant to post money bail required by the court as additional assurance that the defendant will appear for trial. See Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. at 5 (“Like the ancient practice of securing the oaths of responsible persons to stand as sureties for the accused, the modern practice of requiring a bail bond or the deposit of a sum of money subject to forfeiture serves as additional assurance of the presence of an 11 accused.”). But critics argued that the commercial bail bond industry inappropriately delegated to private agents the power to determine which defendants get released. See Preventive Detention Before Trial, supra, at 1490. As one federal judge observed, the effect of the commercial bail bond industry is that the professional bondsmen hold the keys to the jail in their pockets. They determine for whom they will act as surety—who in their judgment is a good risk. The bad risks, in the bondsmen’s judgment, and the ones who are unable to pay the bondsmen’s fees, remain in jail. The court [is] relegated to the relatively unimportant chore of fixing the amount of bail. Pannell v. United States, 320 F.2d 698, 699 (D.C. Cir. 1963) (Wright, J., concurring). {32} Some fifty years ago, widespread concerns about problems and inequities in bail practices sparked national interest in establishing new bail procedures and pretrial programs that would treat the rich and the poor more equitably by facilitating pretrial release without the requirement of monetary bonds. The modern bail reform movement began with the Manhattan Bail Project, conducted in the 1960s by the Vera Foundation in New York City. See Thomas, supra, at 3, 20-27; Goldfarb, supra, at 150-72. Through the Manhattan Bail Project, defendants were interviewed prior to their first appearance in court to evaluate whether they were good candidates for pretrial release on recognizance; that is, release “on one’s honor pending trial.” Goldfarb, supra, at 153-54. The standard interview questions included an inquiry into a defendant’s personal background, community ties, and criminal history. Id. The interviewer scored a defendant’s answers using a point-weighing system and verified answers for accuracy, usually over the telephone with references the defendant provided. Id. at 154-55, 174-75. The interviewers gave the resulting information to the court and made recommendations regarding which defendants should be released on recognizance. Id. at 155. The Manhattan Bail Project proved successful. During the first three years of the experiment, defendants released on recognizance at the recommendation of the Vera Foundation were about three times more likely to appear for trial than defendants in control groups deemed eligible for release on recognizance who instead were released on money bail. Id. at 155, 157. The Manhattan Bail Project “showed that defendants could be successfully released pretrial without the financial guarantee of a surety bail agent if verified information concerning their stability and community ties were presented to the court.” Thomas H. Cohen & Brian A. Reaves, Pretrial Release of Felony Defendants in State Courts 4 (U.S. Dep’t of Justice Nov. 2007). The success of the Manhattan Bail Project increased national interest in bail reform and triggered the creation of pretrial services programs across the country. See Timothy R. Schnacke et al., Pretrial Justice Inst., The History of Bail and Pretrial Release 10 (2010); see also Marie VanNostrand et al., Our Journey Toward Pretrial Justice, 71 Fed. Probation, no. 2, 2007, 20, 20 (discussing pretrial services agencies “as providers of the information necessary for judicial officers to make the most appropriate bail decision” and to “provide monitoring and supervision of defendants released with conditions pending trial”). 12 {33} Driven by the same concerns that inspired the Manhattan Bail Project, Congress enacted the Bail Reform Act of 1966, the first major reform of the federal bail system since the Judiciary Act of 1789. See Bail Reform Act of 1966, Pub. L. No. 89-465, 80 Stat. 214 (repealed 1984). The stated purpose of the Bail Reform Act of 1966 was “to assure that all persons, regardless of their financial status, shall not needlessly be detained pending their appearance to answer charges . . . when detention serves neither the ends of justice nor the public interest.” Id. Sec. 2. The Act included the following key provisions to govern pretrial release in noncapital criminal cases in federal court: (1) a presumption of release on personal recognizance unless the court determined that such release would not reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance in court, (2) the option of conditional pretrial release under supervision or other terms designed to decrease the risk of flight, and (3) a prohibition on the use of money bail in cases where nonfinancial release options such as supervisory custody or restrictions on “travel . . . or place of abode” are sufficient to reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance. See id. Sec. 3, § 3146(a); see also VanNostrand et al., supra, at 20 (explaining that the 1966 Act “established a presumption of release by the least restrictive conditions, with an emphasis on non-monetary terms of bail”). By emphasizing nonmonetary terms of bail, Congress attempted to remediate the array of negative impacts experienced by defendants who were unable to pay for their pretrial release, including the adverse effect on defendants’ ability to consult with counsel and prepare a defense, the financial impacts on their families, a statistically less-favorable outcome at trial and sentencing, and the fiscal burden that pretrial incarceration imposes on society at large. See H.R. Rep. No. 89-1541 (1966), reprinted in 1966 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2293, 2299. {34} Congress again revised federal bail procedures with the Bail Reform Act of 1984, enacted as part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. See Bail Reform Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-473, § 202, 98 Stat. 1837, 1976 (codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 3141-3150 (2012)). The legislative history of the 1984 Act explains that Congress wanted to “address the alarming problem of crimes committed by persons on release” and to “give the courts adequate authority to make release decisions that give appropriate recognition to the danger a person may pose to others if released.” S. Rep. 98-225, at 3 (1983), reprinted in 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3182, 3185. The 1984 Act, as amended, retains many of the key provisions of the 1966 Act but “allows a federal court to detain an arrestee pending trial if the Government demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence after an adversary hearing that no release conditions ‘will reasonably assure . . . the safety of any other person and the community.’” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 741 (1987) (omission in original) (quoting the Bail Reform Act of 1984) (upholding the preventive detention provisions in the 1984 Act); see also 18 U.S.C. § 3142(a) (providing generally the current federal procedure for ordering either release or detention of a defendant pending trial), held unconstitutional on other grounds by, e.g., United States v. Karper, 847 F. Supp. 2d 350 (N.D.N.Y. 2011). {35} Twentieth-century advances in pretrial justice notwithstanding, the administration of bail in the United States remains problematic. See John S. Goldkamp, Judicial Responsibility for Pretrial Release Decisionmaking and the Information Role of Pretrial Services, 57 Fed. Probation 28, 30 (1993) (“Even after decades of bail reform, serious 13 questions about the fairness and effectiveness of pretrial release in the United States have not been resolved.”). A recent United States Department of Justice report, which provides statistics about state court felony defendants in the nation’s seventy-five largest counties between 1990 and 2004, reflects some of the enduring inequalities in our nation’s system of bail. See Cohen & Reaves, supra. The report demonstrates that, in the last two decades, states have again increased their reliance on commercial surety bonds while decreasing the use of personal recognizance releases. See id. at 1-2 (“Beginning in 1998, financial pretrial releases, requiring the posting of bail, were more prevalent than non-financial releases.”). As a result, the number of pretrial inmates in jail populations has grown “at a much faster pace than sentenced inmates, despite falling crime rates.” Kristin Bechtel et al., Pretrial Justice Inst., Dispelling the Myths: What Policy Makers Need to Know About Pretrial Research 1-2 (Nov. 2012). Most of the defendants who remain in custody pending trial stay in jail because they cannot afford the bail set by the court, not because they have been denied bail altogether. See Cohen & Reaves, supra, at 1 (“Among [felony] defendants detained until case disposition, 1 in 6 had been denied bail and 5 in 6 had bail set with financial conditions required for release that were not met.”). “Hispanics were less likely than non-Hispanic defendants to be released, and males were less likely than females to be released.” Id. Twenty percent of these detained defendants “eventually had their case dismissed or were acquitted,” so many of them could have avoided imprisonment altogether if only they had the resources to post bail. Id. at 7. {36} To address the persistent inequities and inefficiencies in our current administration of bail, a number of national entities have promulgated standards and best practices for pretrial release programs. See, e.g., Am. Bar Ass’n, ABA Standards for Criminal Justice: Pretrial Release (3d ed. 2007) (hereinafter ABA Standards); Nat’l Ass’n of Pretrial Servs. Agencies, Standards on Pretrial Release (3d ed. 2004); Nat’l Dist. Attorneys Ass’n, National Prosecution Standards, Standards 4-4.1 to 4-4.5, at 56-57 (3d ed. 2009). Renewed interest in pretrial justice has led some commentators to suggest that the criminal justice system in the United States has begun to experience a new wave of bail reform in the twentyfirst century. See Bechtel et al., supra, at 2 n.1; Schnacke et al., supra, at 21-27 (noting that “jurisdictions across the United States have become significantly more interested in the topic of bail and pretrial release”).