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Posted on 05/17/2026 8:23:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
San Francisco’s top prosecutor says a new California Supreme Court bail ruling will free the career criminals her office spent years locking up.
The state’s high court ruled unanimously April 30 that judges must set bail at amounts defendants can actually afford and may only deny bail outright for violent or sexual offenses, CalMatters reported. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote the 7-0 opinion in a case born from a homeless man’s arrest for buying a $7 cheeseburger with a found credit card.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told the New York Post (NYP) the ruling will undermine her office’s grip on chronic offenders. “Not only is this a devastating ruling for the DA’s office, but a devastating ruling for our state and for San Francisco,” Jenkins said. (RELATED: California’s Soft-On-Crime Dream: Close Prison, Parole Serial Pedophile)
Within days, defense lawyers cited the new precedent to seek the release of more than 90 inmates jailed on drug dealing, theft and other counts, the NYP reported. One woman who allegedly went on a 2023 spree that included a hammer attack and a robbery with scissors walked free wearing an electronic monitor.
San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins warns ‘devastating’ California court will unleash crime wave https://t.co/BUMkmWrg7m pic.twitter.com/Tm0ugmcrRo
— New York Post (@nypost) May 17, 2026
Jenkins pointed to repeat thieves her office had finally jailed. Aziza Graves took more than $60,000 in goods from a single Target across 120 visits, while Tyrese Boswell allegedly hit one Walgreens 27 times in under six months, the NYP reported. A drug bust this week netted 338.5 grams of narcotics and 62 arrests, 52 of them with outstanding warrants.
Burglaries fell 26%, robberies 23% and vehicle theft 44% in San Francisco between 2024 and 2025, according to police data the NYP cited. Jenkins credited swift pretrial detention, not just cameras and drones, for the drop.
California is breaking from a national trend toward tougher detention rules, including President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting cashless bail, the Marshall Project reported. Voters in Alabama and Indiana will decide ballot measures this year to expand pretrial holding authority.
Jenkins did not spare the justices in her NYP interview. “We are going to continue to be the brunt of every joke and attack on Fox News, and rightfully so,” she said.
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FuCalifornia.
Does that mean in CA they highest court can dictate bail rules without legislation? It’s an often-overlooked human right, to have bail you can afford.
The San Francisco DA is entirely correct.
I expect this stupid ruling will be repealed by a California voter initiative on the ballot in the 2028 general election.
It’s in the Bill of Rights......
You can bet that was not the first credit card the guy “found” Some people are just lucky that way. Just look in the right places- peoples pockets, in their purses, in their homes.
Eighth Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
California’s courts are a mess, which matches the rest of the state.
“The said Kalifornia is the place you ought to be; it’s loaded up with criminals they just set free”
So, they’ve interpreted excessive to mean anything more than affordable? Does that square with historical standards? Is the affordability test a historical practice of anomaly? Seriously asking.
To me excessive would be bail that is not proportionate to the offense. Not the jailed inmate’s income. For example the bail for shoplifting should not be equal to the bail for burglary. But it should not matter whether a homeless man committed the burglary or a rich guy shoplifted. Bail must be set based on the offense.
Does this mean a rich guy charged with a minor offense can have the bail amount increased based on affordability?
Notice how those three things are grouped together. The group includes the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This indicates that “excessive” means something much more serious than a person’s inability to meet the required bail amount. It likely means that meeting the bail amount would be beyond the ability of the most people and way out proportion to the charges filed. An amount so high it basically amounted to a jail sentence.
I do SO HATE subjective language in foundational documents. As hard as the Framers worked, you’d have thought by 1789 that any verbiage that could possibly be folded, spindled, or mutilated by future readers would have been avoided like the Black Death.
Right. I was thinking along a similar line. Also, were bail bondsman a thing back in the day. IOW, if you bail was set to 100 could you actually get out on 10 as it is today?
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