ABC spins everything, so I wasn't surprised they'd try to spin the new opinion from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
ABC says, "There's no right to affordable bail! Bail schedules are constitutional!"
The problem is that the court didn't even rule on those things. It didn't need to because the Harris County bail practices were so bad that they presented clear constitutional violations without having to examine any broader issue.
Read the opinion carefully. The court said it AFFIRMED plaintiff's claim that Harris County violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution. Does that make sense? ABC said Harris County didn't violate the constitution, the Fifth Circuit said it did. Bang. Done. Let's go to trial if you really think things have really changed.
The rest -- a bit of a deviation from the district court's remedy for the violations -- is what ABC is trying to use to spin it their way.
Now I'll be honest with you. I don't like the fact that the new remedy allows a judge to -- theoretically -- keep a bailable defendant in jail with money. But that raises substantive due process, excessive bail, and state right to bail issues that weren't even raised in this case. Heck, even people in Texas know you can't detain outside it's own net. They said in on the record down in Houston.
I fully expected to have cases actually go against us occasionally. And if one does, I'll report on it. But this case ain't one of those cases.
