By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Woodland, CA – I’m always looking for good material so I was glad when our intern Ivan Villegas flagged a case last week in Yolo County to my attention. Deputy DA Carolyn Palumbo seemed to come unhinged as the deputy public defender noted that her client would be locked in a cage.
You can read the full article here by Kiana Khatibi and Ivan Villegas.
The accused in the case, suffering from mental illness, allegedly took a debit card, and purchased $200 or so at a Walmart on groceries and other necessities.
Deputy Public Defender Danielle Craig pushed back against the injustice of the system, “In terms of having someone who is poor in custody for no other reason besides being poor, feels offensive.”
She argued, “He has no ability to pay any bail amount.” She continued, “Probation acknowledges in the SOR report that releasing him without a plan to address his mental health and substance abuse issues would be setting him up to fail.”
But then she argued that “caging him would also be setting him up to fail.”
The county jail of course lacks the mental health services and putting him in jail alone without the resources he needed would likely, she argued, lead him to “decompensating” and “that would occur while in the jail for someone who may be struggling with mental health issues.”
The idea that jails and prisons are modern day cages has become commonplace in the criminal justice reform movement. The cage metaphor has been used increasingly to depict and describe the inhumanity of putting a human being in a locked cage particularly for minor, non-dangerous offenses, particularly when they are suffering from mental illness and need treatment rather than confinement or punishment.
But Deputy DA Carolyn Palumbo—as she often seems wont to do—became unhinged at this notion.
Raising her voice, she responded, “Part of me doesn’t even know how to respond to some of those arguments. First of all, it is fully inappropriate to make reference to a person being caged as if they’re an animal, and that is in the penal code. And I will have that section for this court at the next court date. That is completely, completely inappropriate.”
Palumbo also took issue with the notion that incarcerating him would be “offensive.” She said, “It’s offensive when somebody steals somebody else’s ID and use it. It doesn’t matter what the dollar amount is.”
Given the increasing reference to the term “cage” to describe jail and prison conditions, why the DA would become so unhinged begs one to question the extent to which she was using theatrics to influence the court.
For her part, Danielle Craig noted, “I stand by the words I said. I appreciate that those words may not have been appropriate in front of a jury, but we’re here addressing the fact that (the accused) is currently shackled and housed at the Yolo County Jail for offenses that I believe are directly tied to his struggle to survive.”
Under the Humphrey decision, the California Supreme Court acknowledged that inability to pay bail should not be the only justification for a person remaining in prison.
But as we have seen so many times, it is relatively easy to get around the Humphrey ruling.
In this case, Judge Dan Wolk was not unsympathetic to the plight of the accused.
“I’m sympathetic to those arguments, Ms. Craig,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it just concerns this court that we have a number of cases here.” He added, “He’s not coming to court, and then he commits these felonies. There’s a real concern of the court that were the court to release him on supervised own recognizance, there would be a real concern regarding public safety as well as him not appearing in court.”
Wolk found those to be “non-financial conditions” for holding to a $10,000 bail amount which secured him in custody because of his indigence.
It seems that the system has failed him. Crimes of poverty, mental illness, and the notion that somehow locking him in a cage is a viable resolution seems to have fallen short here.
