Pretrial Decisions & Outcomes Post-Humphrey: A Case Study in Southern California

• In Event: Bail & Pretrial Justice Developments in Southern California

Abstract

In 2021, in In re Humphrey, the California Supreme Court held that detaining an individual pretrial, simply based on their inability to pay money bail, violated the 14th Amendment. Specifically, the court ruled that to set monetary bail, the courts need to consider two things: a) whether nonfinancial conditions would protect public and victim safety and assure court appearance, and b) the defendant’s ability to pay. Despite these new requirements, to date, there is no evidence that the Humphrey decision has changed pretrial decision-making practices in California. This study begins to address this gap in knowledge by presenting the results of a case study of pretrial decisions and outcomes in Southern California. Relying on systematic court observations of arraignments in Los Angeles and Orange Counties and supplemental publicly available case data, the study uses a mixed-methods approach to examine a) the factors considered by judges in making pretrial release decisions, and b) the impact of these and other factors on pretrial release outcomes.

Authors

• Kelsey Stubbs, California State University, Long Beach

• Christine Scott-Hayward, California State University, Long Beach