Here comes the Fifth Circuit again.
A majority opinion by Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith halted part of an order by Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal which compelled certain defendants to be released immediately on no-cost bail in cases where a person with the money, arrested on the same charge, would be immediately released. Defendants must have an individualized bail determination made by a judge within 48 hours, the ruling says. The newest member of the appeals court, a Trump appointee, Judge Kyle Duncan, concurred with his holding.
They said that despite Rosenthal’s “well-intentioned effort to comply,” the instruction allowing immediate release to qualified poor defendants “easily violates the mandate, which explicitly found that individualized hearings would remedy the identified procedural violations.”
In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge James E. Graves Jr. wrote that Rosenthal’s order corrects an inequity that is protected by the constitution.
“However thorough and fair it may be, an individualized hearing 48 hours after arrest cannot ‘fix’ the deprivation of liberty and equal protection suffered by an indigent misdemeanor arrestee who is automatically detained prior to that hearing ‘solely because [she is] too poor to pay’ a preset amount of secured money bail,” Graves wrote.
The majority wrote that Rosenthal’s orders were too expansive, straying from their earlier instructions to “narrowly tailor” her 2017 injunction to address certain deficiencies that were placing pressure on judges to move too quickly. Judges that the 14 judges who questioned this portion of Rosenthal’s ruling were likely to win on the merits, the ruling says.
See here for the background. I disagree with the Fifth Circuit’s ruling here, but again this is about the injunction, not the merits of the case. This is about how these courts will operate until a ruling on the merits is made or a settlement is reached. Or, you know, until we elect some better judges in November. Never forget that part. KUHF has more.