State governor, chief justice, and senator teaming up for overhaul of bail system

Sen. Bob Hertzberg recruited two heavy-hitters in his efforts to revamp California’s bail system: Gov. Jerry Brown and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.

Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, announced Friday that he and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, will work with the governor and the chief justice and continue discussions on the bill through fall. The group plans to revisit the bill in early 2018, the second year of the two-year legislative session.

SB 10, the “California Money Bail Reform Act of 2017,” proposes to overhaul the bail system by requiring each county to establish a pretrial services agency that would assess arrestees in terms of their flight and public safety risks. Lower-risk arrestees would be given pretrial release, and higher-risk ones would remain jailed until trial.

Hertzberg and Bonta have railed against a system they argue privileges the rich over the poor. “The truth is today, under the cash bail system, if you can write a check, public safety doesn’t matter,” Hertzberg said. “We need a system that prioritizes public safety and restores justice to the pretrial process, regardless of income level.”

Yet the bail industry has fought the proposals they argue fall short. ““Their inclination would be to hand this off to the probation department or the DA’s office, and those are executive branch agencies,” said Donald Kilmer, a civil rights attorney who represents bail agents in the Bay Area. “This idea that the same branch of government that is going to prosecute you is also going to be involved in the decision of whether you get out on bail turns checks and balances on its head.”

Kilmer also said the judicial branch should not be required to make release determinations. “Judges should be trying cases — they shouldn’t be supervising people on pretrial release.”

During her State of the Judiciary address last year, Cantil-Sakauye suggested that the current bail system may not effectively protect public safety and ensure court appearance without disproportionately impacting low-income Californians. The chief justice appointed a Pretrial Detention Reform Work Group to study current pretrial detention practices and provide recommendations for changes.

“I believe that inequities exist in California’s bail system and I look forward to working this fall on ways to reform the system in a cost-effective and fair manner, considering public safety as well as the rights of the accused,” Brown said in a statement.

Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys Vice President Eric Siddall welcomed the governor’s involvement as good news, because he said it could mitigate SB 10’s public safety failings.

“The governor’s involvement shows there is significant doubt about the bill as currently stands,” Siddall said. “When the governor talks about his interest in ensuring bail reform that takes into account public safety, I would assume that he saw the bill as a failure in that regard.”