Article here. Excerpt:
'In her annual State of the Judiciary address, Leigh I. Saufley announced that, effective immediately, bail commissioners may not set bail in domestic violence-related cases unless they have access to the defendant’s criminal history in Maine.
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Bail commissioners sometimes don’t have that information because of varying legal interpretations, technological limitations, law enforcement staffing limitations and miscommunication, according to Saufley.
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If a bail commissioner does not have a defendant’s criminal history, the defendant will have to remain in jail and appear before a judge within 48 hours, excluding weekends and holidays, Saufley said at a press conference after her speech.
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The chief justice’s action raised concerns among criminal defense attorneys.
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The president of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also expressed concern about Saufley’s directive.
“Holding an accused on a crime that is bailable as a matter of right until criminal history information is received is not a novel concept — the problem is that technical limitations on the sharing of this type of information between law enforcement and bail commissioners results in justice being denied and constitutional rights being violated,” Sarah Churchill of Portland said Thursday in an email.
“What the Chief Justice has proposed can be done without violating the rights of the accused if changes are made to how information is shared,” she continued. “I have concerns about how quickly those types of changes can be made and how the potential violations of constitutional rights of the accused are going to be handled in this interim period of time.”'
