Court Opinion

ID: 9652899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:34:39.444909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:54.942328
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Although the. bail set seems to me quite high, I hesitate in this purely collateral proceeding, Johnson v. Hoy, 227 U.S. 245, *1005247, 33 S.Ct. 240, 57 L.Ed. 497, to rule that the judge had no basis at all for his action. The showing made by the prosecution of the large amount of funds immediately at the disposal of petitioner— many times the amount of the bail set— of the availability of aircraft for flight, of funds sent out of the country, of petitioner’s citizenship by naturalization in a country from which extradition cannot be required, and of the lack of definite hardship to a person of the petitioner’s means in procuring the bail affords some rational basis for the judge’s action, and leaves only the amount set as the cause of reversal. I am not prepared to say that bail of $500,-000 is necessarily a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The opinion tends to emphasize the various excuses and explanations which petitioner presented, but the evaluation of these would seem to me primarily a matter for the district judge. I am particularly doubtful of the direction in substance for bail not to exceed $50,000, because this, too, seems to apply an abstract generality as the norm of decision, without consideration of the particular facts and circumstances disclosed as to this petitioner.
I am, however, concerned that, upon the petitioner’s application to another judge for reduction of bail, with an apparent showing of some additional facts or some change of circumstances, such as the leasing of the aircraft, it was ruled that the action of the first judge could not or should not be disturbed. I see no basis for thus denying rights to a petitioner which would be freely available had the original judge not been a visitor from another district. It would seem to me the duty of the district court to provide that relief in some fashion, either by calling the visiting judge back or by assignment to another district judge. While I am somewhat doubtful whether this issue is properly before us on a writ of habeas corpus, I should not have protested had our action been placed upon the ground that failure to consider the second petition was an abuse of the court’s discretion.