Word: bail
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Supreme Court approves pretrial detention, meaning no bail for dangerous defendants. -- A verdict in the Landis case...
...most important criminal law rulings of the decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has given a new twist to the first axiom of American justice, that the accused is presumed innocent until proved guilty. In a 6-3 decision last week, the court upheld the controversial 1984 Bail Reform Act, by which Congress authorized the "preventive detention" of some federal suspects. For many years federal judges were forbidden to deny bail in most cases, except when there was reason to believe that a defendant might flee before trial. The new law has permitted those judges to refuse bail to thousands...
...court's decision was warmly greeted by the law enforcement officials who have used the new law with vigor, typically against accused mobsters and drug dealers who often have the money to meet high bail. Thirty-four states also permit the threat posed by the defendant to figure in some bail decisions. On the federal level, there has been about a 36% increase in pretrial detainees since the act was passed, from a daily average of 5,383 in 1984 to 7,328 last year, or about one-seventh of those in federal lockup. "It puts a burden...
Civil libertarians, however, warned that the court's endorsement of the principle of preventive detention would change the complexion of American justice. Judges faced with potentially dangerous defendants had long practiced a de facto brand of preventive detention: setting bail so high that it could not be met. But the act legitimized what had until then been an unacknowledged purpose of many bail procedures. "This sends a dangerous message that the trial is an afterthought," said Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz last week. New York Defense Lawyer Alan Silber was reminded of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "To paraphrase...
...ruling came in the case of Mob Boss Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and Vincent Cafaro, a reputed captain in the same Mafia clan, who were charged last year with racketeering. A federal appeals court in New York City ruled that to deny them bail would violate constitutional guarantees of due process...