Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates signed a brief Monday criticizing Calhoun, Ga., officials’ use of bail bonds in municipal court.
“A bail system that indiscriminately jails indigent individuals charged with misdemeanors based solely on their economic status while immediately releasing those who can afford to post a bond is inconsistent with our country’s promise of equal justice,” Yates said in a statement.
The brief, filed by Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, was in support of Maurice Walker, a man with a mental disorder whom Calhoun police arrested in September 2015. Officers were responding to a 911 call about a man who looked drunk on the side of the road. They charged him with being a pedestrian under the influence.
As was the city’s policy at the time, he remained at the local jail with a bond of $160. The city relied on a bail schedule for misdemeanor cases, setting the same bond for every person who had been charged with the same crime. The policy did not account for whether a defendant was too poor to pay the bond.
Days after Walker’s arrest, attorneys with the Southern Center for Human Rights began to represent him. And ever since, arguments between civil rights lawyers and attorneys for the city have bounced through federal courts. Calhoun has since changed its policy, and justices with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals are considering whether the new rules are constitutional.