Did you read where the judge in the George Zimmerman case is considering raising the bail he'd set at $150,000 because a website has raised $200,000 for his defense? HERE is the article.I have no experience with bail, but it seems to me that the people who sent in money want Zimmerman's DEFENSE bills paid with their donations, not for some judge to come back with "OH, you have more MONEY! Well, then let's raise the bail and take ALL you've got."
What am I reading wrong? It sounds so unconscientious on the judge's part.
z
28 comments:
Bail is supposed to prevent the accused from fleeing the jurisdiction of the court. It should not be dependent on the accused's resources unless those resources increase flight risk.
Surely this raising of the bond because of "extra" resources would not happen in a court in America.
That sounds more like Italy or France.
The bail process:
...The amount of bail depends on the severity of the crime but is also at the judge’s discretion. Some jurisdictions have bail schedules which recommend a standard bail amount. For example, in Los Angeles, the bail schedule recommends $25,000 for perjury or sexual assault, $100,000 for manslaughter and $1,000,000 for kidnapping with intent to rape.
In determining bail, a judge may take into account this amount but will also consider the defendant’s criminal record (if any), his or her history of showing up for past court appearances, ties to the community, whether the suspect is a danger to others and any other concerns that may be raised by the defendant’s attorney...
After bail is paid:
Once bail has been paid, the accused is free to go but must appear at the next scheduled court appearance. When the accused appears in court at the scheduled time, the bail that was paid is refunded to whoever paid it.
In cases where the bail is posted by a bail bondsman, the bail is returned to the bail bondsman who then returns the collateral to the accused, minus the fee that the accused was charged by the bail bondsman to supply the bail bond. However, if the accused fails to appear in court, a warrant is issued for his or her arrest, and the court keeps the money; in addition, the accused forfeits whatever collateral he or she provided to secure the bail bond.
Bail typically remains in effect if a trial is postponed.
Caveat: bail procedures vary by both state and county.
He's given no indication that he's a flight risk. Children need to "chill".
Please see my blogs and today's post regarding the Double Standard here.
Thanks.
This is just more evidence that he will not get a fair trial in that area.
It will be the old give him a fair trial and then hang him
Article says the judge is considering raising the bail.
Can the right get anything correct?
The logic that I picked up on this via our local news here in Florida is, because he has that large amount of cash available, it may be tempting to use it in order to flee.
Interesting to note is that the family still raised 10,000 dollars via a second mortgage on a home and that was put towards the bail of $15,000. One reporterette said that money was taken from the defense found in the amount of $5,0000 to cover the rest of the monies for his bail.
I find it odd that if $5,000 dollars of that fund was used, why wasn't all the bail money taken from that fund....I haven't heard the answer to that question yet.
If I were to venture a guess of what's happening, it's just another reaction to political pressure by one or more groups.
One side note, the police chief handed in his resignation but, the town board voted 3-2 not to accept it in hopes that he would stay on.
He was the first causality of the "throw somebody under the bus" by the local politicos.
From what I have read about the situation, if the court would have known about the defense fund, they would have taken the amount into account. The example given was that if a defendant could pay the bail with cash out of pocket, the court would consider that situation a risk for flight, and set the bail higher to account for that risk.
The defense attorneys should have known about the money, and should have revealed that fact to the court. Because of this, the judge feels he was lied to, and maybe he should consider raising the bond.
However, as most comments have pointed out, Zimmerman is not a flight risk. He has demonstrated that he is perfectly willing to go to court and face his accusers.
In my opinion the public was asked to contribute to Zimmerman's legal fund, and they did to the tune of about $200,000. If memory serves it was his family that opened the fund, and the cash may or may not have been available to George Zimmerman to spend on his bail.
The establishment of the fund was in the press, and the judge should not hold Zimmerman accountable for the court's not reading of the news.
What a mess this case is turning out to be.
Ducky sez:
"Can the right get anything correct?"
Ask us again in November.
Scotty: "One side note, the police chief handed in his resignation but, the town board voted 3-2 not to accept it in hopes that he would stay on."
I knew he had removed himself from the case but not that he quit. He resigned for following the law by agreeing with Alan Dershowitz that there was no probable cause?
Is that all that Ducky had to say today?
Must be a bad day in the Duck pond.
Ducky, I don't know...my post says "considering"...can the left ever learn to READ?
Ed, great question. WE'll get it right, I doubt the country will.
Have you started to see the Obama ads? If it gets uglier and more nasty than the ones today, we've got big problems. They're so much more cutting and insulting than the Right's. Except that (horrid) Rove's SuperPac ad's pretty good. Let people see how COOL our president likes to be and how that's not quite what most Americans want!
Viburnum; people in this case have been crucified for nothing. I really feel for them. It's sort of like AZ's immigration laws; suddenly our own gov't is attacking them for doing the right thing, for following the laws. man..what a country.
Scotty, I think it's politics, too. someone's pushing the judge. And hard.
BOB....I should have read your comment first. That's good information and has a large bearing on this.
So if that's how it works, it kind of makes sense.
The thing is, everyone even in Sri Lanka knows that GZ can't escape. He can't even go to the local grocery store for fear for his life, so this bail thing's a stretch.
These are not rich people, either. You don't get far with $100K for the rest of your life.
AOW, thanks for that information. I just thought that raising it was a little nuts...but Bob's information makes sense.
Joe, it does sound kind of vigilante, but see Bob's comment.
Jarhead, it doesn't matter. I'd have deleted him if his comment didn't expose so much about him.
He won't be here anymore much...maybe he can go flap in your pond!?
Z: "people in this case have been crucified for nothing."
Indeed. It's long since ceased to be about GZ and has become a trial of Florida's and every other state's self defense provisions. It's enough to make you wonder if we'd even be hearing about this if it weren't for the SCOTUS decision re McDonald.
In the words of another guy named Zimmerman "...he's only a pawn in their game."
Ducky, I don't know...my post says "considering"...can the left ever learn to READ?
--------
I can read just fine. Can you reason?
The emphasis is on the fact that nothing much has happened other than the fringe right's obsession with this case.
All that's going on in the world:
The Rogers bill
American and Israeli officials stating that Iran isn't pursuing nuclear weapons
The student debt problem
Egypt expelling the Saudi ambassador
What does the right focus on? Zimmerman. In fact you focus on whatever rabies radio or Fox tells you to focus on. Do it for Breitbart.
So in fact, I am the one who can read and chooses to pursue a variety of sources.
No Ducky, you are the one who lies like you did in your comment about farm kids and you just did again in this post, And you have the nerve to accuse Z of lying.
Do you even have the slightest clue that you are making a mockery out of any decent thinking liberal?
And you are embarrassing yourself.
No, Ducky, apparently you can't read 'just fine' or you'd not have come off with that.
By the way, when YOU work on a blog, you write what you'd like to feature there, okay? You leave the blogging to those of us who work at it and who you frequent, apparently so that you can spew your America-hatred and whatever hurts so badly inside of you that you need to hurt others.
I won't be keeping many of your comments in the future, so think wisely about commenting here....you've made remarks recently that showed me a lot.
I hope that, someday, you can be happy and accepting and even learn that because others aren't doing exactly what you're doing or thinking doesn't make them stupid or wrong.
I don't like coming off like this, it isn't even my nature, but TO MY OTHER READERS, you haven't seen some of the comments I've read lately...you'd be deleting, too.
Rita..thanks.
by the way, DUCKY, "the FRINGE RIGHT's OBSESSION?"
Have you been sleeping or aren't you reading all the articles and seeing all the TV coverage of sharpton, Jackson, TYson, the NBPP and all the other pimps who are weighing in on this more than anybody else is.
Also, this isn't about 'the right' or 'the left'...that's a stupid assumption you leftwingies have come up with, too.... We want justice, we don't want a man who MIGHT NOT have broken any laws and might have been actually defending himself accused and punished for something he didn't do.
We believe in waiting for the facts but standing up for both sides and exposing the truth about all that happened, not just hanging the white guy because he's white.
It's not our fault it took conservative blogs to give Zimmerman's point of view while we mourned yet another black kid's death.
GO figure.
viburnum said..."I knew he had removed himself from the case but not that he quit. He resigned for following the law by agreeing with Alan Dershowitz that there was no probable cause?"
That's the point that has been missed since the very beginning of this whole mess.
The Sanford police department didn't see as "no probable cause".
After a week or so of investigation(that is never talked about), the department gave the case over to attorney's office with a suggestion that a charge of manslaughter be brought forth!
There's another case except a reverse of the Zimmerman/Martin case that is going on. Trevor Dooley, a black man, killed a white man and used the "stand your ground" law in defense.....guess what was charged for manslaughter.
Isn't it interesting that the Dooley/James case, here in Florida, doesn't get any airtime or press.
NBBP, as I said, the fringe right's paranoid obsessions.
People still walk around with the absurd belief that the judicial system is not a shakedown scam?
Wow.
Ducky makes a point when he says we are obsessing over the Trayvon Martin case while several issues more important to the nation are not receiving much attention.
The Democrats have done a good job in the Trayvon Martin smokescreen which was sorely needed to cover up Obama's miserable performance.
Obama's energy announcements killing the Keystone Pipeline and all new oil drilling are nothing less than an attack on America. Nothing better than a racial incident to keep that out of the news.
The Rogers bill he mentions is the new Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), co-sponsored by Republicans and Democrats, that has the potential of popping the top off some personal information currently held by companies like Facebook, Google, etc. Unfortunately, the Republicans passed the bill in the House, and it is due in the Senate, now.
Student debt is the next financial scam to appear on the horizon. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has been warning of the education bubble for a couple of years.
Now we are finally hearing that there is about one Trillion Dollars in student debt floating in the economy like turds in a punchbowl. Much of it may not be repaid, except by an Obama bailout.
How about Fast and Furious? Where's that going? Do you hear about that incompetence in the main stream press?
What about Obama kissing Iran butt, Egyption butt, Syrian butt, and any other Muslim butt he can find? They must not have taught foreign relations in commuinty organizing classes.
The Democrat Party has to have these smokescreens, otherwise even their base will see how totally incompetent the Obama Administration really is.
Bob, if you were here, I'd pull you to me by the ears and give you a big kiss on the forehead.
what a fabulous comment....you dismayed me in the first few words and then I saw where you were going.
I do believe all of this stuff is smokescreen for Obama...not only smokescreen but the Trayvon case is apparently intended to divide color in America again. The rumor is that the White House figures that if they can't get blacks voting in the huge numbers they did the first time, they have to run with something that'll unite them again, against the "white Hispanic" and come out to vote in fear that their agenda won't be perpetuated.... awful
The law can be a weird thing. If the judge DOES raise the bail after the fact, would it be unprecedented?
IF the 150k bond is partly based on Zimmerman's "indigent family" claims, but it turns out that he had access to 200k in cash, but didn't bring it up or "forgot about it", etc., that sounds like a point that needs clarification, if nothing else.
What if Zimmerman had access to 10 million dollars, or a 100 million? But forgot to bring it up?
Regardless of where you reside on the political spectrum, a lot of the reactions to our justice system are based on a lack of knowledge of it; its procedures, the laws themselves, the technicalities, etc.
Also, I partly agree about the extreme focus on the Trayvon case. Much of it is unnecessary. Much of it is being used for irrelevant political causes and gains, left and right. But at the same time, a lot of the Trayvon/Zimmerman attention -- not all of it -- is appropriate.
I say that because this case might answer a very crucial question about our right to self-defense: "When do we lose it and when do we gain it back?"
Clearly we lose it at some point (when we become the attacker) and clearly, at some point, we get it back (when we become the victim).
One could potentially be both -- the attacker AND the victim -- within the same number of minutes or even seconds. But where do we draw those lines?
As far as I can tell, only in a courtroom can we obtain a legitimate answer to that question.
Last item, on the side, I have to say "Amen" to Ducky on this one: "NBBP, as I said, the fringe right's paranoid obsessions."
I would have probably specified "white right" and I probably would have used more civil language, but you're pretty much spot-on here, Duck.
"if you were here, I'd pull you to me by the ears and give you a big kiss"
Careful, Z. My wife knows about us, and will have lots of time to deal with me, later.
Thanks.
Net, You make some good points. The Trayvon Martin case will be handled by a jury, and the facts of the case will determine the outcome.
However, at stake is the principle of self-defense. When can we invoke self-defense, and when are we not allowed? It's a sticky wicket, but I think we could all make that decision if we are threatened. If we have a gun, we shoot. If we have a knife, we stab. If we have pepper spray, we spray.
If someone were banging my head on the pavement, jacking the response up to World War III would make sense, and defense by gun preferable.
net.."Regardless of where you reside on the political spectrum, a lot of the reactions to our justice system are based on a lack of knowledge of it"
That's exactly why I asked. I didn't condemn or second guess; I asked about bail laws, rules, etc.
And, the best explanation/information was Bob's in his comment.
re Ducky and the NBBP, I had to smile; if it was a white supremacist group of only six people, there'd be hell to pay from most liberals, the media, etc., but they get a pass even though they've had a LOT of media coverage since they tried to hamper voting in 2008 (I don't care what others think, I've seen the videos and heard the interviews until people backed off for some reason...god)....... a LOT.
Ya, no big deal :-)
It does seem stupid to have his bail so high, clearly the guy is not a flight risk, only reason would be protective custody for him, from you know, all those peace-loving, yearning-for-justice liberals out in the community.
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