Several civil rights groups and law firms sued Riverside County authorities over the use of cash bail, which the plaintiffs claim unconstitutionally detains people in jails before they are formally charged with crimes, simply because of their inability to pay, while wealthier people can in effect buy their way out of custody.
The suit is rooted in a Supreme Court of California ruling from 2021 establishing that a person who was arrested cannot be detained solely because they cannot afford bail. People who are arrested and eligible for bail, because they are not being held for certain violent felonies, can pay a bail agent what is typically a 10% portion of the bail amount the judge ordered for their release. If they can’t afford it, they remain in custody until their case is resolved or the judge allows some other arrangement.
Two civil rights groups, Civil Rights Corps and Public Justice, and several law firms filed the suit on behalf of two detainees in the county’s jail system and two clergy who are residents of Riverside County. In addition to the county, the defendants are the county’s court system and its sheriff’s department.
The suit filed Wednesday in Riverside County Superior Court focuses specifically on people who are jailed until they are arraigned, a hearing in which they are read the charges against them and they’re given an opportunity to enter a plea. Due to court schedules, some might wait up to six days for those hearings to take place. Sometimes these people are not ultimately charged with crimes or their cases are diverted to other court programs, including those for the mentally ill or addicted.
The county’s court utilizes a bail schedule, in which there are set prices for bail for specific charges. The supreme court ruled this practice unconstitutional because rigid adherence to the county’s bail schedule does not properly consider the person’s inability to pay and can unnecessarily prolong their detention.
In addition to its argument about the bail schedule, the suit cites investigations by The Desert Sun and The New York Times on a surge in deaths among jail detainees in recent years. Those investigations found that the county has the highest rate of jail killings among large jails in the state and was generally the second-deadliest of large jails in the nation. This surge in fatalities in the county’s jails, the plaintiffs allege, further puts detainees at higher risk of violence and death.
Research shows that the first hours and days of a person’s time detained are particularly hazardous and destabilizing. One 24-year-old man was killed by his cellmate in 2023 just a day after being booked. A 21-year-old woman jailed on a misdemeanor died by suicide in 2022 about a week after she was booked. She had been ordered to a behavioral health diversion program earlier that day and was attempting to contact deputies, but was ignored moments before she took her own life in view of a cell camera that was supposed to be monitored by staff. The county has paid more than $13.3 million in settlements related to the deaths, and about a dozen cases remain unresolved.
The suit outlines the cases of two people who were detained for three and five days respectively, and eventually released or placed in other programs after their court hearings. They were interviewed in county jail after being arrested Memorial Day weekend and said they had not been told the cost of their bail, how it was determined and when they would see a judge to discuss it.
“The crux of our case is that jailing them simply because they didn’t have enough cash, and delaying their arraignments for days, was unnecessary, unconstitutional, a terrible use of taxpayer money and disrupts people’s lives in ways that only undermine public safety,” said Salil Dudani, a senior attorney with Civil Rights Corps. “Yet this is happening every day on a large scale in Riverside County.”
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco manages the county’s five jails and is currently running for California governor. He released a statement Thursday saying the lawsuit was baseless.
“The pro-criminal lobby has tried for years to destroy the bail system, which has worked as intended since our country was founded,” Bianco said the statement, adding: “If criminals don’t want to pay bail, I’d advise them to stop breaking the law.”
His statement echoed previous remarks he’s made publicly that those detained in the county’s jails are virtually already guilty of the crimes they were arrested for. The examples cited by the suit outline people who were detained before being formally charged with any crime. A foundational tenet of the nation’s justice is that people are presumed innocent unless convicted at trial by a judge or jury.
Bianco’s mischaracterization of people’s legal status while incarcerated in the jails he manages was made explicit in 2022, when 19 people died in the county’s custody.
The Desert Sun reported that year that the county’s sheriff’s department had reported to the California Department of Justice that people who died in county custody had been convicted and sentenced at the time of their deaths. The Desert Sun reviewed court records and found, in fact, none of them had been. The department has since revised those reports to accurately note they were in custody awaiting resolution of their cases. The Department of Justice opened an ongoing civil rights investigation of the sheriff’s department in 2023.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Lawsuit calls Riverside County ‘cash bail’ system unconstitutional