The mystery of the bail

I was looking at the bail rates in our county and noticed a discrepancy between the parents' charge and their bail.

On Oct. 12, 2010, Andrew's parents were picked up by law enforcement, and the next day were charged in our county's Superior Court with willful cruelty to a child. The child cruelty in question had to do with an incident in which the father had poked Andrew's older half-brother in the chest, and the boy had fallen into a table. Child Protective Services and the police had dismissed the report of this until Andrew's baby sister died of SIDS three months after the incident, on July 12. The next day, CPS placed the older boy with his biological father and Andrew in foster care.

The parents had to keep going to Juvenile Dependency Court, where they heard CPS' reports about the case. CPS claimed that the incident had been on purpose. They contradicted themselves as to whether it had been ongoing or one time. No one seemed to pick up on this and other flaws in their reports. They used a doctor and a detective they had picked to investigate. They used quotes from interviews that didn't sound the way that the interviewees talked. CPS doesn't record interviews, and they don't allow you to do it, either. None of their information was backed up by outside sources. The police saw the older boy after his accident and did not find it serious. They investigated the house after the baby died and found nothing. The month after the death, they held the parents for a few days but let them go on lack of evidence.

I don't know why the arrest was made. The basis for it was CPS' reports. The last one had been presented in Dependency Court on Sept. 14. In between that and the arrest, there was no new evidence. The parents weren't interviewed by anyone. At their arraignment, no extra findings were presented. What were the police and CPS doing in that that time?

My nephew's father had bail set at $200,000. According to the bail schedule of our county's Superior Court, this was too high. He was charged with willful cruelty to a child. The bail for that is $100,000. His bail was the same as for armed robbery and a sex conviction with two previous convictions. It's more than one would get for assault with a deadly weapon ($50,000) and causing a train wreck ($100,000).

My sister was initially also given a bail of $200,000, even though she was accused only of doing nothing to stop the alleged abuse. Her bail was reduced to $2500.

From our case, I think there's too much willingness in our local law enforcement to go along with CPS. The parents were charged even though no one not connected to CPS found anything. I wonder why the bail was so high. The charges only had to do with the older boy, but they may have had the baby on their minds. The father's lawyer said the police wanted something with which to charge them in order to give them leverage in case they pursued a murder charge in the death of the baby. She had been diagnosed with SIDS by the hospital. My mother overheard an officer at the arraignment say that they would get them for murder. The autopsy that came out the following May appeared to clear them by saying that no cause of death was found. 

I also wonder at the discrepancy in our county between the number of overall children and the number in foster care. We have the fifth highest number of children in the state, but have the second highest number in foster care. I don't think we're any more prone to abuse than anywhere else. We are, however, one of the poorest counties. Parents don't have many resources to fight accusations. Andrew's parents had to hire their own attorneys because the public defender was too busy.