Court Opinion

ID: 9464653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:39:06.68134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:44.633521
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
With deference, it seems to me that in debating the issue whether some presumably innocent persons awaiting trial may, consonant with equal protection, be released on grounds not available to others— including a ground arguably involving classification by wealth — both the majority and the dissent take hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Florida maintains a system by which pretrial detainees may obtain release in various ways, the fifth of which is putting up money bail. The dissent maintains that since paupers cannot put up this bail, the scheme discriminates against them on grounds of wealth, an arguably suspect classification, in failing to incorporate a presumption against such bail for them. If this be so, and the equal protection attack by these indigent detainees had carried, I do not see how they would have benefitted from their victory. We cannot write such a presumption as the indigents contend for into the Florida rule. All we could do is strike down its provision for money bail entirely, as invalid for want of such a presumption. The only result of such an action as that by us would be that others who might by this traditionally-recognized means have been enabled to secure their appearances and so have obtained release must remain incarcerated — barred from the manger by Aesop’s proverbial dog. I suggest that these people are the ones properly to be identified with Martial’s goats (dissent, n. 2), which the dissent complains nobody discusses, and I propose to discuss them.
It seems to me that the appropriate analysis, whether along equal protection lines or those of due process, should not focus on one factor of the Florida grocery list to the exclusion of all others. No one maintains that we are not in the presence of a compelling state interest, that of assuring that persons accused of crimes will appear for trial. Present also is a right, the right of one charged but not proven guilty to go free if his presence at trial can reasonably be secured. The list of means for obtaining release provided by Florida for such persons should therefore be as inclusive as possible, permitting anyone able reasonably to assure his appearance at trial by any means available to him to do so. The fact that one among many of the means specified is unavailable to other detainees does not mean that he should not be released if it is available to him. For the focus must be on the right to release — to bail — of those still presumed innocent, and on effectuating that right by all reasonable available means, rather than on limiting the exercise of that right as narrowly as possible — to means universally available to all detainees. To do so is to stand the right to release on its head.
But, it may be objected, suppose Florida should add to its six criteria a seventh providing for release, say, of accused females over age forty? How could such a provision, keyed to sex and age, pass constitutional muster? My answer is that if experience reliably indicated that females over forty invariably (or almost so) appeared for trial although released without other security, it might well be unreasonable on the part of Florida authorities to place additional conditions on their release. The emphasis, in other words, should be on the breadth and rationality of the span of classifications, not on how universally each mode of release specified is available to detainees. But if I understand the dissent’s analysis *1071under it such a criterion would be stricken down out of hand as violative of equal protection.
Here we deal with a right, the right to release of presumably innocent citizens. I cannot conceive that such release should not be made as widely available as it reasonably and rationally can be. It is beside the point that a rational ground for release may happen to coincide with an otherwise suspect category. Perhaps this circumstance may trigger strict scrutiny of its rationality, but the aim of that scrutiny should be to determine whether the category is not reasonably calculated to effectuate its purpose— release of those who by means of it may assure their appearance at trial — or whether it is too narrowly drawn, not to eliminate it because others may not be able to avail themselves of it and so swell the jail populations with persons who need not be there.
I agree with the majority that the new bail rule is the only issue presently before the court and that the rule is not facially unconstitutional. To me, it pretty clearly requires release of a pretrial detainee if he can satisfy any of its categories for securing his appearance, one of which is open-ended. (Majority opinion, n. 2). Since this is so: since all means permitted by the rule must be considered by the magistrate before he decides whether release can be risked or not, I do not see that it matters which he considers first, third or last. The dissent’s discussion of a presumption against money bail for paupers, which seems to me to say no more than that the magistrate must consider this means last of all when paupers are before him, is therefore too refined for me to grasp.