Crime Thread

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ZZLPHeel

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Don't want to start a thread specifically for one case, but there is another case in the news today involving a person allegedly murdering someone while out on bond for allegedly murdering someone else (in this instance, her four month-old child). The person charged in the most recent murder allegedly killed the witness who was cooperating with the police in the child death case:

"The neighbor of a woman charged in a fatal stabbing on Tiffany Court last month explained in her call to 911 how the wounded man ended up in her apartment.

Kadejah Dockery, 28, is charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Joseph Woods, 40, at the Rosehill Gardens Apartment Complex where Dockery lives.

The charging document alleges Dockery stabbed Woods multiple times Sept. 16 and then took him to a neighbor's apartment "in an attempt to cover up and conceal the assault."
Woods' death happened nearly a year after Dockery was charged with felony child abuse in death of the couple's 4-month-old son, Joeshine, in March 2022.

An autopsy found that the 14-pound infant had cocaine in his system, but the report classified the cause of death as "undetermined."

An affidavit in the child's death investigation said that Woods told police he believed Dockery intentionally killed the baby and that she had sent him a photo of the child before the death stating, "here's your last pic."

In December, after allegedly threatening Woods by saying she would file a false police report against him if he continued to cooperate with police, Dockery was arrested on a charge of intimidating a witness. She was out on bail on the child abuse charge at the time.

Dockery remained in jail without bail Friday."

www.fayobserver.com

'He still ain't getting up,' 911 caller says of wounded Fayetteville man left at her house.

Caller says neighbor dropped the victim off. The next day, he was dead.
www.fayobserver.com www.fayobserver.com
 
Going back to previous discussions on this board, I still have a hard time understanding why some people charged with homicide can be released on bond and others are held without bail. Had this woman been held without bail until her felony child abuse trail, this witness would likely still be alive today.
 
Comes from having too many laws that were written to handle a particular situation for their political message instead correcting lacunae in the legal system. We've ended up with a hodgepodge of statutes that can be played against each other.

That's part of the problem with the NC amendment. It actually adds ambiguity instead of clarification.
 
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The Eighth Amendment begins "Excessive bail shall not be required" and there is a presumption of innocence in our system of justice.

Unless someone is a flight risk, or can be demonstrated to be a danger to the community such that no combination of conditions of pretrial release will satisfy the court, they are entitled to a reasonable bail sufficient to ensure their attendance at their court proceedings.
 
The options are basically either 1) keep all accused locked up until their trial, which would require building huge numbers of additional jail cells and keeping people who range from innocent to low risk locked up. That creates a number of societal problems for a country that already incarcerates a higher percentage of people than all of our peers, or 2) have someone (ie judges) use their best informed judgement about who needs to be locked up until trial and who doesn't. The system will never be perfect and it's easy to say after the fact that a person who re-offends should have been kept in jail, but the truth is there's no way to really know.
 
Great responses so far. I think with surveillance and body camera footage being so widespread now, the likelihood of conviction should be a greater factor in the consideration of bail for serious offenses. For example, if someone such as a previously convicted felon is captured on body camera footage fleeing from the police in a high-speed car chase, and then that body camera footage also shows the police discovering an illegal firearm in that person's vehicle after the chase concludes, that person should stand less of a chance of making bail than someone facing the same charges but without video footage conclusively showing them committing the crimes they are accused of. Or maybe this already is the case, and I'm just not aware of it?
 
ZZLPHeel said:
Great responses so far. I think with surveillance and body camera footage being so widespread now, the likelihood of conviction should be a greater factor in the consideration of bail for serious offenses. For example, if someone such as a previously convicted felon is captured on body camera footage fleeing from the police in a high-speed car chase, and then that body camera footage also shows the police discovering an illegal firearm in that person's vehicle after the chase concludes, that person should stand less of a chance of making bail than someone facing the same charges but without video footage conclusively showing them committing the crimes they are accused of. Or maybe this already is the case, and I'm just not aware of it?
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I don’t think that “likelihood of conviction” is taken into account, but certainly things like previous convictions and likelihood to harm others or commit more crimes are taken into account.

The fact is that you’re trying to predict future behavior and that’s never going to be perfect, but the system does try to account for what will happen if someone is released.

A bigger issue in my mind is the role that wealth & privilege plays in such decisions, as that is a place where “outside factors” from the case can play a major role.
 
ZZLPHeel said:
Great responses so far. I think with surveillance and body camera footage being so widespread now, the likelihood of conviction should be a greater factor in the consideration of bail for serious offenses. For example, if someone such as a previously convicted felon is captured on body camera footage fleeing from the police in a high-speed car chase, and then that body camera footage also shows the police discovering an illegal firearm in that person's vehicle after the chase concludes, that person should stand less of a chance of making bail than someone facing the same charges but without video footage conclusively showing them committing the crimes they are accused of. Or maybe this already is the case, and I'm just not aware of it?
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Don't know but believe that there is an entire laundry list . Severity of the crime, standing in the community as to if you're a flight risk, being required to surrender passports and on and on.

When it comes to body cams, they shouldn't mean much until there are no unexplained outages, or forgetting to turn it on in time or some way to guarantee that there was no tampering. You can't ignore them and certainly need to be part of trial evidence where they can be legally challenged regarding all that but I, personally dislike the idea of using them in bail arrangements.
 
Likelihood of conviction absolutely should not factor in the decision making process of the judge assigning bail.

Severity of the crime, risk of flight, and the danger posed to the community are plenty. Arrest is not conviction, the judge at the bail hearing is not a jury, and pretrial detention is not supposed to be a punishment- punishment should come after conviction, not before.
 
This is an easily answerable question. Presumption of Innocence. Pre-trial arrest and detention violates that principle. It literally involves imprisoning people who have neither pleaded nor been found guilty. The accuracy rates on arrests is not terribly high, so if you deny bail to anyone accused of homicide, you will end up with a lot of people unfairly imprisoned.

It also explains why the strength of the prosecution's case is in fact a factor in bail. I'm not sure it is a direct factor everywhere, but at a minimum it affects flight risk.

Basically, bail is a compromise between the principle of not imprisoning the innocent and not allowing criminals to escape punishment through flight.
 
ZZLPHeel said:
the likelihood of conviction should be a greater factor in the consideration of bail for serious offenses.
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You can't judge likelihood of conviction. You can only measure strength of evidence. And while that is relevant to the bail inquiry, it shouldn't be taken too seriously since none of that evidence has actually been vetted.
 
ZZLPHeel said:
Had this woman been held without bail until her felony child abuse trail, this witness would likely still be alive today.
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I have gleaned that this can be sometimes difficult for people to understand, but that is not a valid consideration because you can justify ANY policy that way.

Look at automobiles. Pickup trucks and SUVs (especially the big ones) cause more deaths than small cars (duh). And accidents are worse when people drive fast. Just think about how many lives we could save if everyone had to drive a compact and the speed limit everywhere is 50 mph.

Tide Pods should not exist. After all, it's because of Tide Pods that a few kids were killed when they ate them. In fact, all laundry detergent should be completely non-toxic. That way, kids don't die when they eat them.

While we are at it, think about how many people are killed by white Americans every year. Think about how many people would be alive today if only we put white Americans in prison pre-emptively and make them prove they are no danger to the community before being released. But you know, black people also kill lots of people. Do the same for them. And every race. Every nationality. We'd all be perfectly safe if we were all in prison!
 
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