No. of Recommendations: 9
Judges should have the discretion to protect the public from established criminal predators even if the current charge is for a DUI. The word is discretion. They could still let him out on bail but that is way better than current laws which require him to let him out on bail.
Certainly one could argue for that, but that's not how rights really work. Once they're discretionary, they're not really rights any more. They're privileges.
I think you're assuming that if you give the state the ability to lock certain people up before they've been convicted of a crime, they're going to do that against a category of people you would be fine with ("established criminal predators") rather than a category you'd hate to see them use ("conservatives," or "gun owners," or "folks that criticize the judicial system"). That's why we don't give the state the discretion to decide that some people are to be treated under the assumption that they are innocent of the current charges and not others. Everyone's entitled to be treated as if they have only been accused of a crime, and not yet convicted.
DUI's are another too frequent example we hear about where some innocent family is wiped out by some guy driving drunk who has four or five prior DUI convictions. Maybe if he was still in jail waiting on trial for DUI #4, he would not have had the opportunity to commit DUI #5 where the family is killed Or Maybe that would not have saved the family but it is worth a try.
And if he was given a very long prison term for DUI #3, he also would not have been able to commit DUI #5. Or DUI #4. In this hypothetical, the driver was a danger to society the day before he was arrested for DUI #4 as he was the day after. There's a reason, though, we don't say "Hey, let's just go out and lock up for six months without charges or trial everyone who has three past DUI convictions" - even though that would be likely, statistically, to prevent a few DUI deaths. Either that extra six months of jail time should be part of their third conviction, or it has to wait until they are convicted of another crime - you don't just imprison people without a conviction because you think it will make you safer.
If you think people who have demonstrated a propensity for criminal offenses should be locked away to protect the public, that's perfectly constitutional. That's the very heart of "three strikes" laws, or sentence escalators for prior criminal conduct. Once you have determined that someone is an "established criminal predator," you can certainly take action to keep them off the streets. The point is that you get them off the streets based on a conviction, not based on a charge.
Again, that's the fundamental basis behind having a due process right to a trial - we limit the government's ability to lock you in prison based on some government official's pointing a finger at you. It's the conviction, not the allegation, that gives the government the power to lock you away.
Albaby
