California civil liberties groups cheered a decision by the state Supreme Court that wipes out hundreds of dollars in fines for a reputed Mexican Mafia member \u2014 a move advocates say strengthens protections for indigent defendants in other cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis holding is a meaningful step toward a justice system that does not punish people for poverty,\u201d said Kathryn Eidmann of Public Counsel, whose landmark 2019 victory set the stage for Monday\u2019s decision. <\/p>\n
The ruling irons out recent judicial efforts to protect California convicts from what Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu called \u201ccascading consequences\u201d of administrative debt. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile a defendant\u2019s poverty does not make him any less subject to punishment for violating the law, our justice system must not punish a defendant more harshly simply because he is poor,\u201d Liu wrote in his concurrence. <\/p>\n
The case is one of scores to emerge in the wake of People v. Due\u00f1as, a 2019 ruling from the state\u2019s appellate division that found imposing mandatory fines on indigent people ran afoul of the 8th Amendment, which prohibits excessive fines along with cruel and unusual punishment.<\/p>\n
Velia Due\u00f1as was homeless mother with cerebral palsy and two young children who ended up behind bars and drowning in debt because she continued to drive after her license was suspended over three unpaid citations she racked up as a teenager.<\/p>\n
Jason Hernandez, whose victory Monday strengthens those protections, is described in court filings as a Varrio Fallbrook Locos gang boss and Mexican Mafia \u201cshot caller.\u201d Hernandez was convicted of brutalizing a woman he said owed him money \u2014 stabbing her in the head and neck and breaking several bones in her face \u2014 and then conspiring to kill a man who witnessed the beatdown. <\/p>\n
In 2019 he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 restitution fine to the state\u2019s victim compensation fund \u2014 money he told the court he didn\u2019t have. <\/p>\n
California officials argued being broke wasn\u2019t enough to justify trimming Hernandez\u2019s bill. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe committed a vicious assault during which he personally inflicted great bodily injury,\u201d the state argued in a 2020 brief. \u201cTo evade responsibility for that assault he conspired to kill one witness and attempted to dissuade another witness from testifying against him. He committed all these crimes to benefit a criminal gang and he had a long history of prior serious offenses.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hernandez also was assessed a raft of administrative fines and fees, including for lab testing, a drug program, booking fees for his arrest, operations assessments and facilities fees for the court where his case was heard. <\/p>\n
The high court\u2019s decision vacated hundreds of dollars of administrative fees that Hernandez faced and sent the $10,000 restitution fine to the lower court for reconsideration. <\/p>\n
Such fees have come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Proponents say they help defray the costs of delivering justice. Critics say they bury convicts in debt and land them back behind bars simply for being poor. <\/p>\n
Following the Due\u00f1as decision, California lawmakers passed a bill that would have forced courts to determine whether defendants could pay before imposing many remaining fines \u2014 effectively codifying the ruling as state law. <\/p>\n
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must tackle the issue of burdensome fines, fees and assessments that disproportionately drag low-income individuals deeper into debt and away from full participation in their communities,\u201d Newsom wrote at the time. \u201cHowever, I do not believe that requiring a hearing on defendants\u2019 ability to pay is the best approach in every case.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response the legislature voted to eliminate some of the state\u2019s most controversial fees and effectively nullify others. What emerged in the ensuing years is a patchwork of conflicting appellate court decisions, which the Supreme Court attempted to resolve Monday. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile today\u2019s ruling adopts a narrower constitutional framework than Due\u00f1as, it affirms a core principle our work helped advance: Courts must consider a person\u2019s inability to pay before imposing certain court assessments,\u201d Eidmann said. <\/p>\n
The decision does not go as far as the bill Newsom vetoed but does extend more latitude to poor convicts to avoid or challenge fees and fines imposed by the court. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough our holding resolves the orders in this particular case, we urge the Legislature to revisit issues surrounding court-ordered ancillary payments in criminal cases and address them in a more comprehensive manner,\u201d Associate Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California civil liberties groups cheered a decision by the state Supreme Court that wipes out hundreds of dollars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[60728,3653,7,9,8,2081,1436,42165,6848,60729,14063,15692,60727,60726,60730,592,225,72],"class_list":["post-113056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-administrative-debt","tag-bill","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-supreme-court","tag-case","tag-court-filing","tag-decision","tag-duenas","tag-fee","tag-fine","tag-indigent-defendant","tag-jason-hernandez","tag-justice-system","tag-people","tag-state","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}