Court Opinion

ID: 9698246
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:45:42.578609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:39.647463
License: Public Domain

*594Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Koberts :
I—Original Jurisdiction
By denying Isaac Hartage’s request1 that we take original jurisdiction of his habeas corpus petition, a majority of this. Court has today declined the opportunity to consider one of the most urgent problems currently facing our criminal law system. The majority offers by way of explanation the observation that it cannot find on this record the “imperative necessity or apparent reason why expedition is desirable or required”, and the stated hope that the Criminal Procedural Buies Committee can better perform the task the majority has today abjured. I can subscribe to neither rationale and must dissent from this abdication of this Court’s responsibility.
Unlike the majority, I fully believe that the petitioner has demonstrated the futility of attempting to proceed through the “ordinary appellate channels”. The last time the issues raised in the present petition were pursued through the ordinary appellate process, the appeal was rendered moot before this Court could consider it. Commonwealth ex rel. Ford v. Hendrick, 215 Pa. Superior Ct. 206, 257 A. 2d 657 (1969). I believe that the test for assuming jurisdiction in the instant case should not be whether this petitioner has fully exhausted his other remedies, but whether he stands a *595reasonable chance of getting to this Court if he attempts to proceed in the usual fashion. Past experience clearly indicates that he does not stand that chance. Indeed, given the normal time lag in our appellate procedures, it is difficult to imagine how this question will ever come before us in the “normal” fashion. For no such case has heretofore reached this Court on the merits, and the majority is silent on how any litigant will ever achieve what Ford did not, and what Hartage has today been denied.
The problems which attend pretrial incarceration are truly extraordinary, and I fully believe that they deserve an extraordinary response. Literally thousands of indigents, many of them innocent of any wrongdoing, are today languishing behind bars because they cannot afford their money bail. Every day these thousands must undergo a confinement which has been imposed upon them without any determination of their guilt or innocence and without any finding that jailing them is the only method of assuring their future presence in the courtroom. The assertion that “expedition is not desirable or required” is beyond my comprehension; these numbers represent human beings, men who will continue to suffer the rigors of an arbitrary imprisonment because a majority of this Court today refuses to confront this vexing issue. I have every hope that this practice of wholesale indiscriminate pretrial imprisonment will one day cease to exist, but that hope is of little comfort to those who this day remain in our prisons because they cannot purchase their release pending a judicial determination of their guilt or innocence.
I must also express my disagreement with the majority’s assertion that the problem is ripe for the consideration of our Criminal Procedural Rules Committee. The amount and type of bail, and the conditions under which any individual ought to be admitted into bail, are simply not procedural matters. What could *596be more substantive than the decision as to whether an accused should be imprisoned even before he has been adjudged guilty? It seems apparent to me that it is for this Court to determine the substantive content of the right to bail. Once that is decided, the Criminal Procedural Rules Committee does indeed have a valuable role to play in setting forth the manner in which an accused can assert his rights, but its role is no broader.
Thus because of the gravity of the problem presented, and because of the practical difficulties of adjudicating the issues raised in this case in any way other than by the grant of original jurisdiction, I would take original jurisdiction and remit the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
II—The Right to Bail
Pretrial coercive measures are constitutionally permissible only if used to insure an accused’s presence at subsequent legal proceedings. Article I, Section 14 of the Pennsylvania Constitution states: “All prisoners shall be bailable by sufficient sureties, unless for capital offenses when the proof is evident or presumption great.” And the Supreme Court of the United States has held: “The right to release before trial is conditioned upon the accused’s giving adequate assurance that he will stand trial and submit to sentence if found guilty. . . . 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 . . . serves as additional assurance of the presence of an accused. Bail set at a figure higher than an amount reasonably calculated to fulfill this purpose is ‘excessive* under the Eighth Amendment ” Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1, 4-5, 72 S. Ct. 1, 3 (1951) *597(emphasis added).2 As Mr. Justice Jackson noted in Ms concurring opiMon in Stack, 342 U.S. at 7-8, 72 S. Ct. at 5: “The practice of admission to bail, as it has evolved in Anglo-American law, is not a device for keeping persons in jail upon mere accusation until it is found convenient to give them a trial.”3
There is little doubt, however, that the money bail system, as currently admimstered in most of this Commonwealth, is not operating in accord with these requirements.4 It has been roundly condemned, and I do not propose to discuss its shortcomings at great *598length.5
6I would rather like to suggest what I believe to be some general principles for improving the administration of pretrial release systems.
Initially, it should be presumed that an accused is entitled to be released on his own recognizance,8 which presumption may only be overcome by a specific, on the record finding that there is a substantial risk of nonappearance.7 Only the least restrictive measures consistent with counterbalancing the risk of nonappearance should be utilized in any given case. As the American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice has pointed out in its study on Pretrial Release, the alternatives to the indiscriminate utilization of money bail are numerous: (1) an accused could be released into the care of a qualified person or organization which would be responsible for supervising the accused and assisting him in making his court appearances; (2) an accused could be released under a probation-type arrangement whereby he would be responsible for making regular contact with some responsible official; (3) an accused could be released on the condition that he agree to certain appropriate restrictions on his activities; (4) an accused could be made to participate in a work-release type program or could be required to live in something like a “halfway house”; (5) an accused could be required to post a fi*599nancial bond;8 or (6) any other reasonable program could be instituted.9
*600Since money bail is now the prevalent precondition for pretrial release, I feel it necessary to add that it should be utilized only in those instances in which no other, less onerous, condition can provide the necessary assurance of subsequent appearance.10 Furthermore, the setting of money bail in an amount which is clearly higher than a given accused could furnish is never appropriate. If it is determined that no amount of money bail which the accused can provide, and no *601other reasonable restriction short of incarceration will guarantee the accused’s presence at subsequent proceedings, then incarceration, not an illusory and impossible bail, is the appropriate restriction.
The imprisonment of an accused prior to a determination of guilt is a rather awesome thing: it costs the taxpayers tremendous sums of money;11 it deprives the affected individual of his most precious freedom, liberty; it deprives him of his ability to support himself and his family; it quite possibly costs him his job; it restricts his ability to participate in his own defense; it subjects him to the dehumanization of prison; it separates him from his family; and, without a trial, it casts over him an aura of criminality and guilt. These deprivations are especially unjustifiable in view of the fact that many of those who are accused of crime and jailed before trial are eventually acquitted. In Philadelphia alone, over twenty-five percent of those accused who are imprisoned prior to trial are eventually discharged of all criminal liability, and many more accused spend more time in jail prior to their trial than they would have had to if they had been released and then tried, convicted and sentenced.12 In all these *602cases, and especially in those instances in which the accused is eventually exonerated from all criminal liability, the accused has been made to suffer punishment of the harshest variety—imprisonment—without even an adjudication of guilt, or the judicial imposition of a sentence.
I would remit this matter to the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia for determination of the appropriate pretrial release condition in accordance with the principles set forth in this opinion.
Mr. Justice O’Bbien joins in this dissent.

 Mr. Hartage has filed a petition for habeas corpus, a supporting brief, and a replication to the answer filed by the district attorney, while an amici brief in support of petitioner’s position has been submitted by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Bights Under Law, the Program Council of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Christian Conference of Philadelphia, the Episcopal Community Services of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, and the Bepresentative Meeting, the executive of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Beligious Society of Friends.

 See also State v. Menillo, 159 Conn. 264, 38 U.S.L.W. 2575 (1970) ; Whitty v. State, 34 Wisc. 2d 278, 149 N.W. 2d 557 (1967) ; People v. Ingram, 34 Ill. 2d 623, 217 N.E. 2d 803 (1966) ; Matera v. Buchanan, 192 So. 2d 18 (Fla. App. 1966) ; Palmer v. District Court, 156 Colo. 284, 398 P. 2d 435 (1965).

 Since any discussion of bail would be incomplete without some mention of “preventive detention,” I feel it necessary to note that pretrial detention for any purpose other than insuring the presence of the accused at trial would appear to be precluded by the above cited constitutional and decisional authorities. In the least any system of “preventive detention” would require full scale adversary hearings to be even arguably constitutional. This would add a heavy, unwise and unnecessary burden to our already crowded criminal court docket, and would seriously impair the ability of our criminal courts to achieve the proper solution to the problem— a swift and speedy trial. Why should we interpose these preliminary procedures, with their extensive and costly pretrial hearings, and thereby divert substantial judicial, prosecutorial and defense manpower from the prompt disposition of criminal cases? Further, I do not see how even these pretrial adversary hearings can accomplish their goal, which is the differentiation between those accuseds who are likely to commit further crimes, and those who are not. Such distinctions are not, in my opinion, easily made with any degree of accuracy.

 See Bail Project of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, Progress Report, February 9, 1966 to September 8, 1967 (1967) ; Foote, The Coming Constitutional Crisis in Bail, 113 U. Pa. L. Rev. 959 (1965) ; Compelling Appearance in Court: Administration of Bail in Philadelphia, 102 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1031 (1954).

 See generally, The Challenge of Crime In a Free Society, President’s Crime Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967, 131 (1968) ; American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, Pretrial Be-lease, Approved Draft, 1968.

 See the Bail Beform Act of 1966, 18 U.S.C. §3146 (1970) ; American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, Pretrial Belease, 5.1 and Commentary at 5.1(a), Approved Draft, 1968.

 See Commonwealth ex rel. Sprowal v. Hendrick, 438 Pa. 435, 265 A. 2d 348 (1970).

 The American Bar Association recommends that the posting of any required bail bonds be administered by the courts rather than by professional bail bondsmen. Such a system would have considerable flexibility, since the judicial officer fixing the bail could require either an unsecured bond, or a bond secured in full by cash or other property, or, and this would be the most common type of bail, the execution of an unsecured bond for the full amount of the bail accompanied by cash or property equal in worth to ten percent of the full amount of the bail. In this last variety of bail the down payment, less an appropriate administrative fee, should be returned at the conclusion of the proceedings if the accused has not failed to fulfill the conditions of his release. American Bar Association Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice, Pretrial Release, §5.3 and Commentary, Approved Draft, 1968.
The advantages of such a system are obvious, since the accused would stand to recover most of his ten percent “down payment” if he complied with the conditions of his release, rather than forfeit the entire amount regardless of future performance, as is the case where professional bondsmen are used. The “skip rate” under such a system is actually lower than that achieved by professional bondsmen (perhaps because the possibility of regaining some of the money actually paid for the bond exists). And, further, the professional bondsmen very rarely perform the function, retrieving the elusive accused, for which they are theoretically paid. The FBI and the police are the people who really pick up those who fail to appear, and the bonds, even then, are rarely forfeited.

 The federal Bail Reform Act of 1966, 18 U.S.C. §3146, provides, inter alia:
“(a) Any person charged with an offense, other than an offense punishable by death, shall, at his appearance before a judicial officer, be ordered released pending trial on his personal recognizance or upon the execution of an unsecured appearance bond in an amount specified by the judicial officer, unless the officer determines, in the exercise of his discretion, that such a release will not reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required. When such a determination is made, the judicial officer shall, either in lieu of or in addition to the above methods of release, impose the first of the following conditions of release which will reasonably assure the appearance of the person for trial or, if no single condition gives that assurance, any combination of the *600following conditions: (1) place the person in the custody of a designated person or organization agreeing to supervise him; (2) place restrictions on the travel, association, or place of abode of the person during the period of release; (3) require the execution of an appearance bond in a specified amount and the deposit in the registry of the court, in cash or other security as directed, of a sum not to exceed 10 per centum of the amount of the bond, such deposit to be returned upon the performance of the conditions of release; (4) require the execution of a bail bond with sufficient solvent sureties, or the deposit of cash in lieu thereof; or (5) impose any other condition deemed reasonably necessary to assure appearance as required, including a condition requiring that the person return to custody after specified hours.
“(b) In determining which conditions of release will reasonably assure appearance, the judicial officer shall, on the basis of available information, take into account the nature and circumstances of the offense charged, the weight of the evidence against the accused, the accused’s family ties, employment, financial resources, character and mental condition, the length of his residence in the community, his record of convictions, and his record of appearance at court proceedings or of flight to avoid prosecution or failure to appear at court proceedings.”

 The Vera Foundation's Manhattan Bail Project, which dealt exclusively with those accused who could not afford the bail set in the normal course of their proceedings, achieved a “skip-rate” of less than seven-tenths of one percent, clearly demonstrating that bail is hardly the most effective method of assuring an accused’s subsequent appearance. Freed and Wald, Bail in the United States: 1964, A Report to the Rational Conference on Bail and Criminal Justice, 29, 62 (1964). The success of the various bail projects in achieving low “skip rates” indicates largely that the lack of adequate notice is the single most common cause of failure to appear.

 In Philadelphia alone, the cost of pretrial incarceration is over $5,000,000 per year (1,484 prisoners awaiting trial each day at a cost of $8.10 per man per day). Complaint in Mandamus, in Commonwealth ex rel. Carroll v. Tate et al., filed in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, Trial Division, Civil Section, at No. 3084, June Term, 1970.

 Last year about 28% of the clients of the Defender Association of Philadelphia who were incarcerated prior to trial (“prison cases”) were discharged of all criminal liability. See Directors of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, 34th Annual Report, June 1, 1967 to June 30, 1968, p. 20 (1968). Over half of the Philadelphia Bail Project clients were discharged of all criminal liability, Bail Project of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, Progress Report, February 9, 1966 to September 8, 1967, p. 20 (1967), and “. . . fewer than one-half of one percent . . . were ultimately required to serve *602a sentence that even approached the time that would have been served had the Project not been functioning,” id. at 14. See also Rankin, The Effect of Pretrial Detention, 39 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 641, 642 (1964) (27 percent of the jailed defendants were not convicted) ; Note, A Study of the Administration of Bail in New York City, 106 U. Pa. L. Rev. 693, 726-27 (1958) (about 10 percent of the jailed defendants were discharged before trial and another 20 percent at trial).