Posted on 05/17/2026 8:23:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
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I expect this stupid ruling will be repealed by a California voter initiative on the ballot in the 2028 general election.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?
Kommieformia.
The nation’s laughing stock.
The best thing I did recently was to flee from behind the Pink Curtain of the People’s Republic of California in 2021 for the green hills of Tennessee.
It is been fun watching California implode from 2,000 miles away. Maybe we will get lucky and Mexico will annex California soon.
And to think California championed “Three Strikes” laws....in another place in time.
Bad facts make bad law. She wasted time and effort on some homeless petty criminal, and now the court slaps her.
Bail is guaranteed under the 5th Amendment, and everybody has a right to it. That right can be overcome if the criminal commits sex crimes or any crime of violence.
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.
That’s way under the 1250 dollar theft threshold that has been touted about on the media. Stealing a seven dollar cheeseburger never should’ve gotten this far. I guess when you go too far resting something that could’ve been handled differently you have to take the final results that come with it.
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