Court Opinion

ID: 9598952
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:13:22.301944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:43.681661
License: Public Domain

TANZER, J.,
dissenting.
The majority orders the release of petitioner in habeas corpus upon a holding as a matter of law that the amount of $3 million bail is excessive. Regardless of whether any of us, sitting as trial judges, would set bail that high, I cannot join the holding that it is constitutionally excessive as a matter of law.
According to the petition, the trial court had before it information indicating that the petitioner has no connections to Oregon and intended to return to California pending these proceedings. On his application for release on recognizance, petitioner indicates that his total net income last year was $2,200 and that it was about the same this year, which, without further explanation, might cause the trial judge to be skeptical of petitioner’s candor. Police reports before the trial court and attached to the petition indicate that petitioner had been jailed in Peru for cocaine trafficking for 39 months, where he met one of his current associates. Upon his arrest, petitioner admitted, among other things, that he was to be paid $2,500 for setting up a sale of a kilo of cocaine for $63,000. The seller was his Peruvian jail associate who had been furnished four kilos of cocaine by a Columbian national at a price of $53,000 to $55,000 per kilo. The trial court may reasonably infer that a transaction of that magnitude is not an isolated or casual one.
From this information, the trial court was entitled to infer that petitioner is involved in cocaine trafficking at a level involving large sums of money and that it might well be worth anything less than $300,000 cash security deposit and the risk of a probably uncollectible $2.7 million debt for petitioner to flee and avoid a potentially long-term prison sentence. A trial judge could reasonably infer that *468petitioner’s associates would find it worth something less than $300,000 security deposit to allow petitioner to flee, whether from loyalty or from a desire to eliminate him as a potential witness. Petitioner’s lack of any roots anywhere, let alone in Oregon, together with information indicating high-level, big money, international traffic in cocaine make the trial court’s determination reasonable.
Particularly, I cannot join in a majority holding that the trial court was unreasonable as a matter of law unless it is able to come up with a figure which it deems to be the maximum reasonable bail figure or with conditions of release which are reasonable under the circumstances. This they cannot do. In the absence of their ability to do so, I am unwilling to say that the trial court order, and hence petitioner’s restraint, was unlawful.