History of Bail
Nearly 4,000 years ago, King Hammurabi created a code of law for the old Babylonian empire. The Code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest sets of law ever found and includes such modern legal notions as personal injury law, family law, murder, assault, theft, and guaranteed an individual’s the right to bail.
In medieval England, the local sheriff had the right to determine who was eligible for bail and the amount of the bail. In 1275, the Statute of Westminster limited the sheriff’s authority. Although they still had the right to determine the amount of the bail, the statute set forth which crimes were bailable and which were not.
In 1689 the English Bill of Rights prohibited excessive bail.
In Colonial America, bail law was based off English law. While some of the colonies enacted their own bail laws, others simply guaranteed their citizens the protections of British law. After the American Revolution, those colonies without their own bail laws quickly enacted their own versions.
The Sixth Amendment, to the U.S. Constitution, like the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1678, requires that a suspect "be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation", thus enabling a suspect to demand bail if accused of a bailable offense.
In 1789, the same year that the Bill of Rights were introduced, Congress passed the Judiciary Act, which set boundries on a judge’s discretion in setting bail and states that suspects in non-capital cases should be given bail. In capital cases the decision to detain a suspect prior to trial is left to the judge.
Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia states that “according to the San Francisco News and the SF Chronicle, the first modern Bail Bonds business in the United States, the system by which a person pays a percentage to a professional bondsman who puts up the cash as a guarantee that the person will appear in court, was established by Tom and Peter P. McDonough in San Francisco in 1898.”
Under current law, a defendant has the right to bail unless there is sufficient reason not to grant it. The main reasons for refusing bail according to the Bail Act 1976 are that there are substantial grounds for believing that the defendant (1) will abscond; (2) will commit further offences whilst on bail; or (3) will interfere with witnesses. Conditions may be applied to the grant of bail, such as living at a particular address or, rarely, paying an amount into court or having someone act as surety. Release on bail is sometimes referred to as police bail, where the release was by the police rather than by a court. The alternative to being granted bail is being remanded into custody (also called being held on remand). |
