A new lawsuit could upend Jacksonville’s system of detaining poor defendants charged with minor crimes. The lawsuit filed Thursday says Jacksonville’s system of money bail — that is, someone charged with a crime must pay a set amount to be released without regard to the defendant’s ability to pay — violates poor defendants’ rights to equal protection under the law. The current system allows the …
According the the filings in a lawsuit brought by Equal Justice Under Law against Harris County, Texas, 77% of the inmates in Harris County Jail — largest in Texas, third largest in America — are there because they couldn’t make a bail payment of $5,000 or less. Bail in the jail is assessed via video-links during which the accused are instructed not to speak and are not given access to …
A Yucca Valley businesswoman is suing San Bernardino County and a sheriff’s deputy over her arrest and incarceration in December 2014. Lucinda Cox filed her lawsuit in February in federal court in Riverside, alleging that she was arrested on charges that were not thoroughly investigated and jailed at West Valley Detention Center for seven days because her bail had been improperly…