A rabbi was on his way home from a religious study hall in the heavily-Orthodox Pico-Robertson section of Los Angeles in late April when he said he noticed a van driving slowly behind him. <\/p>\n
The young father, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the driver seemed to follow him down an alley off Pico Boulevard. Moments later, he said, the man leaped out of his van. Surveillance video showed the rabbi being shoved into the alcove of building and choked. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was yelling for help at the top of my lungs,\u201d the rabbi said. \u201cIn my mind I\u2019m accepting this is how it\u2019s going to end.\u201d <\/p>\n
As the attacker climbed back into his van, he shouted \u201cFree Palestine,\u201d the rabbi said.<\/p>\n
The suspect was arrested on May 19, and L.A. County prosecutors asked that he be held on $125,000 bail in connection with a hate crime assault, noting that he was a repeat offender with prior violent felony convictions.<\/p>\n
Instead, the judge set him free without bail, saying a recent California Supreme Court case had forced the court\u2019s hand. <\/p>\n
The April 30 Supreme Court ruling, known as the Kowalczyk decision after a Bay Area man who sued with a claim that he had been unlawfully held on $75,000 bail after being accused of using stolen credit cards to buy a $7 cheeseburger, is the second time in five years that the state\u2019s high court has ordered sweeping changes to the state\u2019s bail policies. <\/p>\n
In 2021, the court ruled Californians cannot be held in pretrial detention simply because they\u2019re too poor to pay. But critics of cash bail say little actually changed<\/a> as a result. Legal experts say the latest ruling is different, functionally outlawing cash bail in most cases, and strictly capping the amount in others. <\/p>\n Over the past month, so-called Kowalczyk motions have flooded California courts, compelling judges to release people they would previously have held on bail. Meanwhile, courts are struggling under the additional burden of reviewing bail determinations for scores of defendants already in custody. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the most consequential and horrific rulings that I have seen since becoming the D.A.,\u201d said San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins<\/a>, an outspoken critic of the decision, who called the court\u2019s move to curb bail \u201ccarte blanche\u201d for California criminals. <\/p>\n Reformers say the shift is both legally necessary and socially prudent. They point to decades of data showing pretrial detention causes widespread harm<\/a> without reducing crime or increasing appearances in court. <\/p>\n \u201cThere have been rigorous studies<\/a> all around the country: Money bail does absolutely nothing to protect the public at all,\u201d said Salil Dudani, a senior attorney for Civil Rights Corps, a legal advocacy organization. <\/p>\n But barely four weeks in, Jenkins and other prosecutors say many of those being released without bail are repeat offenders with long rap sheets for boosting cars, toting guns and selling fentanyl. <\/p>\n \u201cWe had 29 arraignments set for this afternoon \u2014 we\u2019re only filing motions to keep two people in,\u201d Jenkins said in an interview Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n The Kowalczyk controversy hinges on a distinctly Golden State problem: the meaning of \u201caffordability.\u201d <\/p>\n California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote in the unanimous decision that \u201cunless there is a valid basis for detention,\u201d judges must \u201cset bail at a level the arrestee can reasonably afford.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis amounts to a real right to bail in hundreds of thousands of cases, which previously in California might have led to detention,\u201d said Kellen R. Funk, a legal historian at Columbia Law School. \u201cThis will make California a [leader] in actually practicing what its bail law says.\u201d <\/p>\n The California Constitution defines a large number of offenses where bail can be denied outright, among them rape, burglary and arson. But it also requires that almost everyone else be either released on their own recognizance or offered an opportunity to bond out. <\/p>\n In practice, reformers say, bail amounts have largely been set by vibes, with judges given broad leeway to use discretion.<\/p>\n \u201cSetting bail is just picking a number,\u201d Funk said. \u201cIn all of the history of money bail there has never been an attempt to rationalize the money amounts. The money amounts of the bonds are literally picked out of the air.\u201d <\/p>\n California defendants could already challenge those amounts at bail reduction hearings, but the state\u2019s high court judges said they sought to remedy the inconsistencies and protect the rights of low-income defendants. <\/p>\n \u201cA system in which a person\u2019s right to liberty turns on financial resources compromises public safety and raises equal protection and due process concerns,\u201d Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban wrote in his concurrence.<\/p>\n But the new decision doesn\u2019t define what constitutes \u201creasonably attainable\u201d bail. <\/p>\n Jenkins was among the California prosecutors who urged the court not to upend the status quo. She voiced frustration over the subjectivity that she says now shapes the process.<\/p>\n \u201cFor an unhoused person with no job it might be $1. For someone who\u2019s employed as a MUNI driver it could be $1,000,\u201d Jenkins said. \u201cIt\u2019s all relative to what they represent to the court.\u201d <\/p>\n The bail ruling arrives at a moment when many of the state\u2019s most significant criminal justice reforms have already been rolled back. A 2018 law that would have eliminated cash bail was reversed by a 2020 ballot measure. Four years later, an overwhelming majority of California voters approved Proposition 36, reversing a 2014 change that had commuted some nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors. <\/p>\n Jenkins took office in 2022 after San Francisco voters recalled her progressive predecessor, Chesa Boudin, amid boiling anger over property crime and perceived lawlessness. Across the Bay Bridge in Alameda County, fellow reformist D.A. Pamela Price was recalled in 2024 and replaced by Ursula Jones Dickson, who quickly undid many of Price\u2019s signature policies. That same year, Los Angeles voters ousted George Gasc\u00f3n<\/a> in favor of tough-on-crime challenger Nathan Hochman<\/a>. <\/p>\n Even as violent crime<\/a> across the state plunged to historic lows<\/a>, frustration over public disorder, fentanyl deaths and sprawling homeless encampments persists, influencing contests in the upcoming June 2 primary, including the L.A. mayor<\/a> and city attorney<\/a> races. <\/p>\n The most recent Los Angeles County Quality of Life Index survey out of UCLA shows perception of public safety losing ground<\/a> even as property crime has decreased modestly <\/a>over the same period. <\/p>\n Reformists blame politicians for the disconnect. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is relentless misinformation both about the prevalence of those kinds of offenses and about the cure,\u201d said Dudani, the Civil Rights Corps. attorney. <\/p>\n Politicians, in turn, blamed the judiciary. <\/p>\n \u201cNo one knows what goes on in these courthouses,\u201d Jenkins said. \u201cNo one knows that judges in their ivory towers who don\u2019t live in the communities affected by crime are even issuing these rulings.\u201d <\/p>\n Crime victims like the Pico-Robertson rabbi say they just want to feel safe. The defendant in his case has pleaded not guilty and is now awaiting trial.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a struggle,\u201d the rabbi said. \u201cA lot of people are worried. Nobody wants to take any chances.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rabbi was on his way home from a religious study hall in the heavily-Orthodox Pico-Robertson section of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[20558,23115,7972,139359,129399,3622,16047,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,129398,68664,139357,139358,225,139360,72],"class_list":["post-337744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-amount","tag-bail","tag-brooke-jenkins","tag-california-criminal","tag-cash-bail","tag-court","tag-judge","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-money-bail","tag-pretrial-detention","tag-rabbi","tag-real-right","tag-state","tag-van-driving","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337744","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=337744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}