They are still writing in to the paper about this.
Today, there's a letter from the current Chair of the County Legislature, a radical former anti-war protester, self-described hippie, who says "My values haven't changed, just my tactics."
He opines that:
Following the release of the three people charged with a racially motivated attack on Patricia Morris, many members of the community have claimed that a double standard applies in our courts. I believe that those claims are accurate and that demands for change are justified. but I hope that, in demanding equal treatment, we will demand equal justice rather than equal injustice. A Journal editorial defending the release said "A bail hearing has a single, very narrow purpose: assuring that the defendants will show up in court. If there is a risk of flight, bail is set; if not, it's wrong to levy bail. It's quite cut and dried, really." This is a clear statement of a basic constitutional principle, but one that is commonly ignored in our courts, especially when people of color are charged. Regardless of how outraged and angered we are by the viciousness and racial nature of the attack, these defendants have the right to be treated by the court as innocent until proven guilty. But the black man sitting in jail with $2,000 bail for drug possession, petit larceny, or assault, or the Hispanic woman charged with forgery and given a $1,500 bail, also had the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Our jail is full of people awaiting trial who pose no serious risk of flight, but cannot make bail. Those people are disproportionately African-Americans and other people of color. In years of working to reduce the number of people in our local jail, I have often advocated The Journal's cut-and-dried position: that the only purpose of bail is to ensure that defendants appear in court. What I have encountered from professionals in the criminal justice field, including judges, is a whole range of excuses for using bail to keep people in jail: the person is dangerous, has a long criminal history, he's intoxicated, he's being belligerent in court, the judge has seen him repeatedly, he needs to be separated from the people he's hanging out with. I believe The Journal has even editorialized in favor of some of these rationales in other circumstances. When we accept or support these abuses of bail and they have a racist effect on who sits in our jail, we help set the tone that says racism is tolerated in our community. It's important that community leaders speak out and condemn racist violence when it occurs here. It's even more important that we act to change those elements of the larger system that support and encourage racism. As long as we allow our institutions to function in ways that have racially biased results, our words of condemnation have a hollow ring. When we put a stop to the abuse of bail that keeps poor and minority defendants in jail before trial, we'll be able to honestly deny the existence of a double standard. Let's take a stand for both equality and justice.
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