When is bail excessive

Whatever type of bail bond you need, to get the process started, all you need to do is call What is the purpose of excessive bail? Setting excessive bail amounts can have many purposes. Some judges may set an excessive amount specifically because they believe the accused will otherwise flee, especially when evidence points toward guilt and a probable conviction.

No matter how well-intentioned, setting excessive bail amounts is almost always an abuse of power. The Court also noted that, even if the Bail Reform Act could be hypothetically unconstitutional, this was insufficient to render the entire statute invalid. As the Eighth Amendment only provides a constitutional protection for the amount of bail set, there is no constitutional protection for receiving speedy bail. In Fields v. Henry County , F. Please help us improve our site! For progressives, what constitutes cruel punishment cannot be resolved by opinion polls or the popularity of the punishment.

The legitimacy of a punishment must be assessed instead by evaluating whether it serves an appropriate and acceptable penological purpose. In this respect, the Eighth Amendment does not merely prohibit barbaric punishments; it also bars disproportionate penalties.

A sentence of life imprisonment without parole may be acceptable for some crimes, but it would violate the Constitution to condemn anyone to die in prison for shoplifting or simple marijuana possession. For progressives, the constitutionality of a particular punishment cannot be evaluated in the abstract. The decency or legitimacy of a punishment can be assessed reliably only in context. I believe that the question whether the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment cannot be resolved by simply asking whether a person deserves to die for the crime he has committed.

I believe we must first ask whether we deserve to kill. If we have a death penalty that is applied in a racially discriminatory manner, where the race of the victim shapes who gets the death penalty and who does not; if we have a death penalty that is imposed not on the rich and guilty but on the poor and innocent; if we execute people with methods that are torturous and inhumane, then we have a death penalty that violates the Eighth Amendment.

Since the modern era of capital punishment in the United States began in the s, people have been proven innocent after being sentenced to death. We have executed more than people during the same time period. For every nine people executed, one innocent person has been exonerated. For progressives, this is an unacceptably high rate of error: The probability that an innocent person has been or will be executed offends our standards of decency, and renders the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth Amendment.

Fairness, reliability, racial discrimination, bias against the poor, political arbitrariness, and other factors that did not trouble the framers of the Constitution, nonetheless shape how a decent society must interpret the Eighth Amendment today. For progressives, the Constitution must evolve and be interpreted so that the rights of people who are less favored, less protected, and less influential are not sacrificed to serve the interests of the powerful and the popular.

The framers of the American Constitution should be celebrated for creating a prohibition on punishments which are cruel and unusual; but it is incumbent on all of us to insist on a Court that applies the prohibition fairly, sensibly and justly for an evolving nation. Judges and law professors discuss problems facing the American criminal justice system, as well as the prospective reforms. On September 11, , terrorist attacks carried out against the United States would become the catalyst for at least two wars,….

Amendment 8 Collapse Text Menu Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Amendment 8.

The Eighth Amendment by Bryan A. Stevenson and John F. Parker, U. Please help us improve our site! No thank you. LII U.