Officials could revise bail-bonding policies
By John Stevenson, The Herald-Sun
November 26, 2006 12:22 am
After years of taking it on the chin over what's widely criticized as a revolving-door court system that puts criminals back on the streets almost as soon as they are arrested, Durham judicial officials are considering revising bail-bonding policies next year.
And they may hold a public forum as early as January or February to help judges decide whether bonding guidelines need to be updated in response to evolving community conditions.
Current guidelines have remained unchanged for at least six years.
At the top of the felony scale, the guidelines provide no bond for those facing possible death penalties for first-degree murder.
The highest dollar figure on the chart is $200,000, suggested for first-degree rape suspects and first-degree murder cases not involving potential capital punishment.
The recommended bond in second-degree murder cases is $100,000. The maximum penalty for that crime is roughly 40 years in prison.
From there, suggested bail numbers go all the way down to $1,000 for Class I felonies, the lowest felony level on the books in North Carolina. Offenses in that category include public cross-burnings, safecracking and false bomb threats. The punishment goes up to 15 months behind bars.
Judges can deviate from the suggested dollar amounts at their discretion, but are supposed to be guided by public safety considerations, a person's previous criminal record and the likelihood a suspect might flee, among other factors.
District Attorney Mike Nifong is among those advocating a public forum before local bonding guidelines undergo possible changes.
"There's really a lot of misunderstanding out there," he said in an interview. "There's kind of a systemwide misunderstanding of what we do and how we do it.
"Once things are explained to people, whether they like what they heard or not, they are appreciative. It's good for members of the community to be informed and to give us their input. An informed citizenry would likely be less quick to assess blame when things go wrong."
But Nifong said public perceptions of a revolving-door court system probably will persist no matter how much local bonding guidelines are tinkered with.
Many believe it is too easy for criminal suspects to get out of jail on low bonds, only to commit new offenses and keep repeating the process in a vicious cycle of community-endangering violence.
Durham's revolving-door reputation has received intense scrutiny from a private watchdog group called the Durham Crime Cabinet and numerous writers of letters to the editor, among others.
"Whatever the [bail] numbers are, they're not necessarily going to address this perception," Nifong acknowledged. "And it doesn't matter what your bond is if you can post it."
Four years ago, a judge went way above the bonding guidelines and set bail in the $800,000 range for first-degree murder suspect Michael Peterson, who did not face the death penalty. Peterson soon went free by putting his million-dollar house on the line as bond collateral.
He later was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the fatal beating of his spouse, Nortel Networks executive Kathleen Peterson.
Similarly, a judge initially doubled the suggested $200,000 bond for three first-degree rape suspects in the controversial Duke lacrosse case. But the bonds then were lowered to $100,000 each.
The three defendants -- Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans -- posted bail even before the reduction.
According to Nifong, professional bail bondsmen can manipulate the system by giving favors to criminal suspects they trust.
While bondsmen normally charge a nonrefundable fee of 15 percent, they can undercut or raise the fee as much as they like, he said.
"It makes for kind of an artificial system," he added. "The bondsman can require as little or as much as he wants to get you out [of jail]. It's whatever he feels comfortable with. This means things are not as cut and dried as they appear to be. Our bonding policies do not directly address that."
Like Nifong, Chief District Judge Elaine Bushfan supports a public forum on local bonding policies.
"Traditionally, one thing we have not done well is to talk to the people about what we do and how we do it," she said. "I just think it's time to educate our constituency. I believe it's appropriate to speak with the public before we decide to change things."
But suggested bond amounts never will be set in stone, according to Bushfan.
"It is in a judge's discretion to make decisions about this," she said. "That discretion cannot be taken away. Even if we revise the numbers, judicial discretion will remain."
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-792537.html
DUKE PREZ SAYS RAPE CASE IS TESTING DURHAM
by CASH MICHAELS, The Wilmington Journal, Originally posted 11/26/2006
Brodhead warns of division
[DURHAM] Calling it “an event of some fame…that’s been a burden to us all,” the embattled president of Duke University told the Durham NAACP Saturday that the continuing saga of the Duke lacrosse alleged rape case presents a unique challenge for people on all sides of the racial controversy to “stand together” for the truth, and “…protect ourselves and each other’s humanity.”
He also seemed to suggest that the Duke Three deserved more of a “presumption of innocence” than many supporters believe they’ve been getting.
In his keynote remarks to the Durham NAACP’s 32nd Annual Freedom Fund Banquet Saturday night, Pres. Richard H. Brodhead admonished African-Americans and whites to remember the struggles and accomplishments of the civil rights movement; the positive historical relationship he noted between Duke and Durham; as the legal principles of due process, presumption of innocence and justice based on evidence, as the racially divisive case proceeds towards possible trial.
“And that’s why it seems to me that everyone who is a party to this issue, in this community or elsewhere, has got to understand that our collective community faith requires us to stand together for truth and justice, even in the face of difficult situations, and emotions,” Brodhead, who was warmly received, said.
At no time did the Duke president say anything about the two Black exotic dancers involved, or the three white Duke lacrosse players indicted for allegedly raping and kidnapping one of the females during an off-campus drunken team party last March.
But in surprisingly blunt language, Brodhead said he realized the explosive nature and implications of the allegations, and the tense issues they’ve provoked in the African-American community.
“I do understand that …what was alleged to have happened has a special emotional charge to it because of the idea of white men commandeering Black women for their pleasure has a painful history,” Brodhead read from his prepared remarks to the packed, predominately African-American audience at the Durham Hilton. “It has a history that one would not ignore, and that history was aggravated.”
“And in the spring when it became my burden or mission, some days, to remind people of the presumption of innocence, more than one person from this city asked me if I thought if it had been a Black man and white women, would that person have enjoyed the same presumption of innocence?”
“If it were from me, my answer was, ‘You bet they would.’”
Though Brodhead touted the principle of “presumption of innocence,” many parents of Duke students, and supporters of the university, feel the president displayed very little support for the 47-member lacrosse team after he suspended their national championship-bound season just days after the rape allegations were made public last spring.
In a joint statement, the captains of team publicly apologized for the party, but maintained that no rape occurred. Their coach, however, was forced to resign.
Duke Three supporters have also blasted Pres. Brodhead for not speaking out against what they believe to be a “false prosecution” of the defendants by Durham District Attorney Mike Knifing, based on reportedly scant evidence and an allegedly corrupted police photo ID lineup.
They believe instead of leaving the indicted students at the mercy of authorities, he should have rallied the Duke community in support of their own.
But Brodhead, the ninth Duke president in the prestigious university’s history, seemed to echo, albeit in veiled language, the concerns of many of his critics Saturday evening that the three white defendants may not be able to get a fair trial in Durham because of allegations that many Blacks see them as “privileged” white athletes with high-priced lawyers who, at the very least, were part of group from which racial epithets and threats with a broomstick were allegedly hurled at the Black female dancers.
African-American leaders – who agree that on average, typical Black defendants could never afford the legal firepower defending the Duke Three or generate the equivalent press interest in their claims of innocence - still deny claims that a fair trial with Black jurors impaneled in Durham can’t be conducted.
In delicate terms, Brodhead addressed the reality of African-Americans and whites seeing this case through their own unique racial and historical prisms.
“In truth, in our history, …people have had unequal advantage of the law. Some people have not had the benefit of those presumptions (of innocence), and others have. And I understand that is part of the situation we have lived through.”
Brodhead said he saw an unidentified, but presumably Black person on television last spring saying, “I don’t really care if the accused people are guilty or innocent. I would just be happy to see them convicted.”
Then Pres. Brodhead said he saw a “student leader at North Carolina Central University” say, “ What a stupid thing to say, I don’t know anyone who thinks that. Everyone I know thinks we need to have the truth be established, and then let’s have justice be rendered.”
“The world of due process and the world of justice based on evidence is a world we all need,” the Duke president continued. “We need the benefit of presumption of innocence. We need the benefit of waiting until the facts are in before judgment is rendered. We all need that, though I must say, people who have not had the whole benefit of the law know that they have as much or more to lose than anybody from the opposite world, a world where prejudice is allowed to make decisions.”
“A world in which you can decide whether someone’s guilty by deciding what category of humanity they belong to, or a world in which people feel free to reach conclusions without taking the trouble to establish the facts.”
“That is a dangerous world to live in,” Brodhead declared. “That’s not dangerous for some people; that’s dangerous for all people, and that itself is one of the lessons of the civil rights movement.”
Brodhead, who came to Duke in July, 2004, noted that when the controversy over the alleged rape exploded into the nation’s headlines, Durham Mayor William Bell and North Carolina Central University Chancellor James Ammons, joined him in a united front to call for calm in the community, and patience as the criminal justice system sorted out the details.
He urged that patience again, as the case proceeds towards what many anticipate could be a long and emotionally charged trial.
“In the coming months, we will be put under trial again, and we will have to remember that at that moment of trial, we have the need to protect ourselves and each other’s humanity,” Pres. Brodhead said. “To stand up for the general rights of truth and justice and due process.”
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