Early morning local time, Friday, January 25, 2019, longtime GOP campaign strategist, general rabble-rouser, and presidential advisor, Roger Stone, was taken into FBI custody at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He has been charged with a seven-count indictment by a grand jury resulting from the Independent Counsel investigation of potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The office is lead by former FBI Director, Robert Mueller.
Stone, 66, has been involved in politics as a GOP strategist and opposition researcher for decades. He’s advised at least three Republican presidents. He has a tattoo of Richard M. Nixon between his shoulder blades. He’s the subject—and star—of a documentary, Get Me Roger Stone.
He is not a kindly old man living out his days in sunny Florida. Stone is ruthless and calculating. He’s been called “an equal-opportunity trickster” (NY Daily News); “a dashing, colorful artist of the underhanded” (David Brooks); “legendary political hit man” (The Hill); and more. These are merely a few listed on Stone’s own website. Like his Nixon ink, he wears these descriptors proudly.
Per the grand jury, he’s possibly guilty of obstructing justice, witness intimidation (including threatening harm to a pet dog), and making false statements.
But, this article isn’t about Roger Stone, political hatchet-man extraordinaire.
A tale of two bails
Stone appeared in a federal court Friday morning, where he was released on a $250,000 bond. What kind of bond? Not a property bond. Neither Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home nor his shared New York condo are attached. Cash supplied by Billy’s Bail Bondsman? No. Roger Stone is free on a signature bond. That is, he signed his name promising to show up for court. If he does not appear in court, then he forfeits the money.
The signature bond or recognizance bond (R.O.R.) requires the defendant to sign a promise to return to the court for trial, with the possibility of the entry of a monetary judgment against him if he fails to do so, but does not require a deposit of any cash or property with the court. (Source)
Stone’s signature bond did not escape the attention of Dr. Rebecca Kavanagh, a public defender in New York City, who tweeted:
Roger Stone was just released on a $250,000 personal assurance bond.
He does not have to put up one penny. Just to promise to pay that amount if he does not return to court.
Meanwhile, my clients are held in jail on $500 bail they cannot afford for stealing a bar of soap. https://t.co/MnFhr18DiA— Rebecca J. Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) January 25, 2019
Another New York public defender, Scott Hechinger, explains how this system contradicts the Constitution, the 8th Amendment of which forbids excessive bail:
It is remarkable that people, presumed innocent, are locked up before being convicted of any crime. It is deeply unfair that mere accusations can lead to devastating, lifelong consequences. It is alarming that, in a system theoretically built around transparency and truth seeking, police and prosecutors have such outsize power to surveil, search, detain, bully, coerce and nearly destroy a person without producing evidence sufficient to secure a conviction.
Commenting on a case similar to Stone’s, Hechinger continues:
This kind of accommodation is unheard-of for the roughly quarter million people, my clients included, in jail for no reason other than their inability to pay bail. In the real world, despite the constitutional prohibition on excessive bail, decisions to detain people happen in a matter of seconds, with little to no consideration of an individual’s ability to pay. In just the past month alone, prosecutors requested and judges set bail totaling over $200,000 on clients of mine who, collectively, could not have afforded one one-thousandth of that.
(NYT)
$200,000 cumulative bail for accused who could not afford $200. Seems…excessive.
Excessive bail for the poor—many of whom spend their “awaiting trial” time in jail yet are never convicted of a crime—is an ongoing problem in America.
Almost a dozen men in Atlanta said they spent two weeks in jail after being kept out of court where they could have asked for bail on low-level offenses such as running into traffic or not having car insurance.
A Texas county has been accused of conducting jail-house bail hearings in secret, barring family members, community advocates and reporters.
A retired shipyard laborer in San Francisco, accused of threatening his neighbor and stealing $5 and a bottle of cologne, was stuck in jail for more than 250 days. His crime amounted to a few dollars, but his bail was set at $350,000.
(USAToday)
Similar examples are legion. Unfortunately, the problem is baked into our legal system. Charise Fanno Burdeen’s succinctness is spot-on.
America’s criminal justice system is a patchwork of local, state, and federal policies that together resemble a maze with too many entrances and too few exits.
(The Atlantic)
What is the result of too few exits? Burdeen again:
People can lose their jobs, housing, even custody of their kids if they’re in jail. Studies also show pretrial detention makes otherwise low-risk defendants more likely to commit new crimes and less likely to appear in court. Spending the full pretrial detention period in jail also makes a person more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison and for a longer time—effectively adding to the problem of mass incarceration. These harms are not shouldered evenly. Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans are twice as likely to be stuck in jail because they cannot afford money bail. This is in no small part because they face higher bail amounts on average than white defendants with similar charges. All this harm can happen even if a person is eventually found innocent or the charges are dismissed. (Emphasis mine)
It is important to remember: poor people are not typically arrested for grand larceny, embezzlement, securities fraud, or making false statements to investigators about potential collusion in international cyber-election-fraud. Many are crimes of opportunity like stealing daily essentials; petty theft. For the cost of a 6-pack poor people sit in jail for weeks, while on a signature and a promise rich people like Stone go free to appear on InfoWars.
But in any discussion of bail inequities we should included the specter of criminalized poverty as being arrested potentially brings more than one financial cost. A 2014 NPR investigation found
that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required. For example:
- In at least 43 states and the District of Columbia, defendants can be billed for a public defender.
- In at least 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays.
- In at least 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision.
- And in all states except Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, there’s a fee for the electronic monitoring devices defendants and offenders are ordered to wear.
In other words, if arrested even for minor infractions, a whole system goes into motion that can end up costing hundred or thousands of dollars to the person who may not have been guilty in the first place. (For a bail deep dive see this report on Quartz.)
Bail inequity is systemic injustice
If you get arrested in America it is undeniably better to have means. If you can afford your own lawyer you are better off. If you can post bail or bond you are better off. If someone can bail you out you are better off. If you can sign your name and promise to return to court you are better off.
Those who can’t afford bail are typically jailed to await trial. Many of these, after being in jail for weeks or months, plead guilty to lesser charges, are sentenced to time already served, and leave court owing fines they could not afford when they were arrested, much less when they leave. Not to mention owning a new record or a new “conviction” to get it all over with. (Remember: 95% of criminal cases never go to trial. Innocent people plead guilt every day to avoid the possibility of conviction.)
The bottom line is those who do not have means are treated differently in the process, charged more for the process, and end up with longer criminal records than those who have means.
This rigged “justice system” is injustice systematized; it isn’t individual. A judge (in ordinary circumstances) isn’t sinning against the poor person in the dock when bail is set at $500. The prosecutor isn’t sinning against the accused when the normal practice is to ask for bail. The public defender is not sinning against his or her client when they miss a fact on page six of the police report that could have gotten a reduced sentence or no sentence at all.
No; this particular brand of injustice is systemic. It does not require individual malice to produce unjust results. Levi Secord pastor of Christian Life and Growth at Riverview Baptist (St. Paul, MN) provides a biblically sound definition:
when a system of power (government, business, etc) uses its power to promote, enshrine, or accomplish that which is morally evil, wicked, or unjust.
(Riverview Baptist Church)
Joshua Ryan Butler explains how personal corruption is connected systemic corruption, affirming the reality of both:
Corrupted affections corrupt institutions and build corrupt systems.
There is an inseparable relation between the sinful desires of the human heart and the systemic injustices of our world. Sex-trafficking is rooted in lust and greed. Genocide is rooted in rage and pride. Personal responsibility and systemic injustice are not an either/or; they are a both/and.
(Systemic Injustice: A Biblical Emphasis)
For America’s cash bail scheme to be biblically unjust rather than merely culturally unfair (or “bad” owing to a vague “inequality of outcome”) we should find inequitable treatment related to unequal income condemned in scripture.
And, we do.
“Don’t rob a poor person because he is poor, and don’t crush the oppressed at the city gate [the place of legal proceedings],” says Proverbs 22:22. The Prophet Amos relates God’s condemnation: “For I know your crimes are many and your sins innumerable. They oppress the righteous, take a bribe, and deprive the poor of justice at the city gates.” (See also Eccl. 5:8; Isaiah 10:2, 11:4.)
Treating the rich and poor differently in legal proceedings does not reflect God’s righteous standard. As unjust weights and measures do not reflect God’s standard in our business dealings, nor do unjust (unequal) legal proceedings reflect the righteous standard of God. Participants in the Kingdom life should cry “foul” when the scales of justice tilt from the weight of bundled Benjamins. Tim Keller explains:
The Hebrew word for “justice,” mishpat, occurs in its various forms more than 200 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Its most basic meaning is to treat people equitably. It means acquitting or punishing every person on the merits of the case, regardless of race or social status. Anyone who does the same wrong should be given the same penalty.
But mishpat means more than just the punishment of wrongdoing. It also means giving people their rights.
[…]
Mishpat…is giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care.
(Relevant Magazine, from Keller’s book Generous Justice)
Treating the rich and the poor equally before the law recognizes equal dignity rather than unequally regarding assets. America’s cash bail process is not equitable across the board; where it is not equitable, it is not biblical. Further, since it is laws, codes, and procedures that keeps the inequity in place, the injustice is systemic.
Roger Stone should not have required even higher bail or kidney donation to avoid remand to the nearest federal pen; he’s accused, not convicted. But people who are the accused of less serious charges should be given the bail they can realistically afford. The homeless will not be standing in line to secure property bonds.
“Rich and poor have this in common: the Lord makes them all.” (Proverbs 22:2)
“Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed. Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of ht oppressed and needy.” (Proverbs 31:8-9)
Look for Brooklyn Pubic Defender Scott Hechinger on an upcoming episode of Uncommontary.
