Excessive Bail? PDF Print E-mail
In Hernandez v. Carbone, 2008 WL 2900932 (D.Conn. July 29, 2008) an indigent defendant, against whom charges were ultimately dropped, spent a year in jail because he could not post a $100,000 bond.  He sued, among others, the Executive Director of the Connecticut Court Support Services Division (CSSD) arguing that requiring cash or surety bonds from an indigent defendant was unconstitutional.  The court granted the Executive Director's motion to dismiss.  The trial court, not CSSD, set the $100,000 bail and refused to reduce it.  No act of the Executive Director, therefore, caused the alleged harm to the plaintiff for purposes of his federal civil rights claims.  The court declined to exercise jurisdiction over any state law claims or to interfere with the administration of bail by the Connecticut courts because the state court system provided more than adequate opportunities for a defendant to challenge his bail.  The court was careful, however, to say that it was not deciding the merits of the plaintiff's claims and he was free to assert them in a state court suit.