PRESS
'They saved my life': Tallahassee Bail Fund releases nearly 30 people in first year
September 14, 2021
"In the early months of 2020, before Florida’s first case of COVID-19, Angela Crum was homeless. Not knowing where she was going to sleep from night to night, the 45-year-old said she was “on a bad path.”
“I was caught up in addiction,” said Crum, mother of a 20-year-old daughter and grandmother to a newborn. “There’s a whole lifestyle that goes with that.”
In February, she was arrested in Franklin County on charges of possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell and possession of drug paraphernalia. It was what she called a "wrong place, wrong time situation." Her bail was set at $20,000. But there was a problem: No one in her family could afford to bail her out, so she sat in jail for more than three months..."
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Holiday bail funds reunite incarcerated people when they need community the most
December 23, 2021
"Tony Peace was incarcerated in Leon County Detention Facility in Tallahassee, Florida, for two months with no hope of making his $2,500 bail. He had no interest in taking a plea deal either—for a grand theft auto charge he says he did not commit—and was surrounded by thousands of people like him, waiting for their trials in the midst of surging COVID-19 cases, with no end in sight.
His conditions worsened in December, when he suffered an injury to his thumb while working in the kitchen and his supervisor told him to use a meat cutter to chop carrots en masse instead of the standard knife. In an instant, his whole thumb was in the meat cutter. He was rushed to the hospital, but they refused to properly treat him and cauterize the wound, leaving him with a bleeding thumb for days and vulnerable to infection. Peace filed a lawsuit against the jail and three days later, his public defender put him in touch with Hannah Schwadron, an organizer with Tallahassee Bail Fund..."
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ACLU lawsuit against Leon County Clerk of Courts says Florida bail system is unconstitutional
August 16, 2022
"The America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing Leon County Clerk of Courts Gwen Marshall on behalf of the Tallahassee Bail Fund for her enforcement of a Florida law that allows the withholding of bail money put up by any person or charitable organization.
The argument anchoring the complaint — filed Monday — says Florida Statute 903.286 violates the Eighth Amendment by requiring "clerks to use cash bail to impose criminal penalties on innocent parties, such as bail funds, which deprives them of the money that makes their operation possible."
- Link to full article here
Leon County Courthouse. Image courtesy of Tori Lynn Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat.