What our watchers then saw on Friday afternoon was a highly unusual series of arraignment hearings that laid bare the grotesque absurdity of this system.
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In a courtroom suddenly packed with people bearing witness, the prosecutors didn’t ask for bail in a single case—no matter how “serious” the charge. Instead, they consented to release or supervised release for each person.
This shows clearly that when the system feels exposed, it starts letting everyone go. If these “offenses” are worthy of prosecutors requesting bail for one day and suddenly not the next, then clearly these categories are arbitrary and meaningless.
Throughout Friday afternoon, our watchers also saw multiple people arraigned who had been held for 40+ hours, including people who had been fasting for Ramadan, someone who had been denied a phone call to ask for someone to feed his dog, and someone who missed a scheduled surgery.
While the amount of time they had been held was atypical, the stories of how a single arrest sets in motion events that can upend and destroy lives are devastatingly normal stories that our watchers see every single day in court.
Our thoughts are with the man who needlessly lost his life at the hands of this terrible system on Friday morning, his loved ones, and all of those who remain cruelly caged by the state.
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