A somewhat masochistic form of retaliation if you ask me? I assume you mean my accusation that you fail to grasp what I had said earlier? (You fail to provide particulars of the alleged insult, so I'm not sure.) However please note that the message of yours I was replying to, contained the very same "insult" directed at me.
Anyhow, if you don't respond to my messages I will assume the reason is that you don't take any strong exception to them. It wouldn't occur to me you said nothing because you felt slighted. If insulted, I'll probably just return the insult, though sometimes if I'm really annoyed I will just pretend not to notice. And sometimes I really do just fail to notice.
>Your idea that a blanket statute denying bail to everyone charged with petty theft who has a prior violates due due process because it should be an individualized determination is at least colorable, although I haven't researched the question. From a legal point of view, however, pretrial deterntion is never punishment, since the law says a pretrial detainee is presumed innocent.
But of course a person detained in custody for no other reason than that they have been accused of a crime, cannot be said to be getting any benefit from being presumed innocent. In fact such a person is being treated exactly the same in all respects as someone who has been convicted and is presumed guilty. It would not be going too far to say that the only possible rationale for such a statute is that any person who has previously been found guilty of a petty theft *is* presumed guilty. Unless you can suggest any other legitimate rationale for a blanket denial of bail?
The issue of remanding a person in custody for some reason is quite separate. In that case the courts have determined on the merits of the case that bail would entail an actual risk. That isn't what we're talking about here.
> Your characterization of the predicament is therefore legally inaccurate.
It isn't sufficient for the law to make empty proclamations that a person is presumed innocent, if it is meanwhile treating an accused just the same as if he was presumed guilty. If a person is presumed innocent, then there is no legitimate reason why the question of bail cannot considered on the merits.
But in this instance we see that all such accused are detained for no other reason than they are accused of a crime. There is no need to establish that the person is a flight risk, a risk to society, or so forth, In fact, even if an accused could establish that they were none of those things, they would be locked up. The only thing that needs to be established is that the accused has previously been convicted.
In effect this amounts to stripping a convicted person of their civil liberties for life. Effectively a person is henceforth treated as guilty until proven innocent. The state's claims to presuming innocence, being inconsistent with the state's actual behaviour, are therefor merely a transparent pretense.
It is not enough to merely protest that an accused is innocent until proven guilty. While prescribing mandatory imprisonment for these "innocent people". If presumption of innocence means nothing in practice, then it is ridiculous to assert that it is the active legal principle. The law in California must walk the walk, not just talk the talk, or California is a police state. It really is quite simple.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas