New York’s chief judge on Thursday announced a new plan to overhaul the state’s bail law, which he said unjustly punishes the poor and forces them to “serve a sentence before their cases are ever resolved.”
Judge Jonathan Lippmann, who is set to retire at the end of the year, made his announcement in a speech at the Citizens Crime Commission breakfast meeting in Manhattan. He said the courts could no longer wait for lawmakers to take on punitive rules after his proposed bill to reform the bail law failed in State Legislature two years in a row.
“Defendants who are unable to post bail serve a sentence before their cases are ever resolved,” Lippmann said. “They do so regardless of innocence or guilt, and the harm that this injustice causes is intolerable.”
Lippmann said he would use the existing legal framework to set up automatic bail reviews for misdemeanor charges in each borough, which would require judges to reconsider bail costs within 10 days. Judges would also be required to check in on pending felony cases and lower or eliminate bails if the prosecution against defendants has weakened.
Lippmann would also urge judges to consider using alternatives to bail, such as electronic monitoring, or simply setting an affordable cost. Judges and clerks would also be trained in accepting less-known payment methods, such as the use of a credit card or payment of bond directly to the courts, rather than defaulting to predatory bond insurance companies.
“Make no mistake, in my view, the ultimate goal may well be to end our reliance on cash bail in New York,” Lippmann said. “It is fundamentally unfair for a person’s liberty to be all about how much money you have.”
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