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In the event that further assurance was deemed necessary, the judicial officer was required to select an alternative from a list of conditions, such as restrictions on travel. In 1966, Congress enacted the Bail Reform Act of 1966, which expanded the bail rights of federal criminal defendants by giving non-capital defendants a statutory right to be released pending trial, on their personal recognizance or on personal bond, unless a judicial officer determined that such incentives would not adequately assure the defendant's appearance at trial. Eventually offering a wide variety of "services" to those arrested, McDonough became a central figure in the underworld and police corruption. McDonough and his brother Thomas McDonough began putting up bail money for patrons of their father's saloon. The creation of cash bail as a business is often dated to 1896, when San Francisco bartenders Peter P. That prohibition applies in federal criminal prosecutions but, as the Supreme Court has not extended that protection to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment protection does not apply to defendants charged in state courts.
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The prohibition against excessive bail in the Eighth Amendment is derived from the Virginia Constitution. Upon all arrests in criminal cases, bail shall be admitted, except where punishment may be by death, in which cases it shall not be admitted but by the supreme or a circuit court, or by a justice of the supreme court, or a judge of a district court, who shall exercise their discretion therein.
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The Act provided that all non-capital crimes are bailable and that in capital cases the decision to detain a suspect prior to trial was to be left to the judge: That law specified which types of crimes were bailable and set bounds on a judge's discretion in setting bail. In 1789, the same year that the United States Bill of Rights was introduced, Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1789. For example, Section 9 of Virginia's 1776 Constitution originally stated, "excessive bail ought not to be required." In 1785, Virginia added an additional protection to its constitution, "Those shall be let to bail who are apprehended for any crime not punishable in life or limb.But if a crime be punishable by life or limb, or if it be manslaughter and there be good cause to believe the party guilty thereof, he shall not be admitted to bail." Section 29 of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 states that "Excessive bail shall not be exacted for bailable offences: And all fines shall be moderate." In 1776, after the Declaration of Independence, those states that had not already done so enacted their own versions of bail law. Some of the colonies simply guaranteed their subjects the protections of that law. In pre-independence America, bail law was based on English law.
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Some historians speculate that a shift towards the use of cash bail may have occurred with western expansion, as people became more transient and lacked connection with local family and community.
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A person's family or business acquaintances often had an interest in seeing them appear in court and would help to ensure that they did so.
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History īail mechanisms were originally intended to allow someone charged with a crime to remain free until their trial (being presumed innocent) while ensuring that they would show up for it. Bail practices in the United States vary from state to state. Bail in the United States refers to the practice of releasing suspects from custody before their hearing, on payment of bail, which is money or pledge of property to the court which may be refunded if suspects return to court for their trial.
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