By Alyssa Eng
WOODLAND, CA – Yolo County Superior Court Judge Samuel McAdam this week eventually agreed to reduce bail for a man accused of two charges of second-degree burglary, as well as one charge of resisting a peace officer—but the $50,000 was still far above the unemployed man’s “$1,500 to his name.”
The prosecution insisted the bail at schedule would be $100,000 for these charges, and $50,000 is a deal.
But Deputy Public Defender Katie De Anda asked the court to set bail below schedule because the accused only “has $1,500 to his name” and is unemployed.
She argued that “the bail system in this country is set up in a way that if [the accused] goes to pay that $1,500 to a bail bondsman, he is never getting that money back. He is less inclined to do as he is supposed to do…we have seen it pan out time and time again to not be accurate.
“When we set bail at an amount that somebody can actually physically afford to go down to the courthouse and pay that money and they are likely to get that money back, statistics show that they are more likely to do as they are told,” the DPD concluded.
The prosecutor said the accused has two cases for which he failed to appear in other counties, and because of these prior failures to appear, she does not “believe that he is likely to show in this case.”
Recalling the facts of the case, the prosecutor said the accused “did almost $12,000 worth of damage… and then he was caught again on camera three days later where he did another $3,100 in damage.” She requested bail be kept at schedule.
After hearing both arguments, Judge McAdam set bail at $50,000, noting, “bail is still the law in the state of California. Defense makes some credible arguments for the legislature to deal with, not necessarily the trial court.”
The preliminary hearing will take place in two weeks.
