Bearden v. Georgia

Bearden v. Georgia was a 1983 case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a local government can only imprison or jail someone for not paying a fine if it can be shown that the person in question could have paid it but "willfully" chose not to do so.[1]

Background

As a young man, Danny Bearden was convicted of robbery for breaking into a trailer as a young man. As a result, he was ordered to pay a $500 fine and $250 in restitution, which he started off successfully paying off until he lost his job and couldn't find another one.[2] This left him unable to pay the rest of his fines and fees, for which Georgia sent him to prison.[3] Bearden's case was handled by Jim Lohr, a court-appointed attorney who had graduated from law school only a few years earlier. Lohr spent hours researching in the library before the case.[2]

Ruling

On May 24, 1983, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that imprisoning Bearden violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights to "fundamental rights".[3][4][5] In the Court's opinion, Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court's Associate Justice at the time, wrote that it was "fundamentally unfair" for Georgia to have imprisoned Bearden.[4] The ruling held that local governments "must inquire into the reasons for the failure to pay" when dealing with revocation cases for people who failed to pay a fine, and that only if the probationer "willfully refused to pay or failed to make sufficient bona fide efforts legally to acquire the resources to pay" can they be imprisoned or jailed.[6] The ruling also held that courts must consider alternatives to imprisonment and determine that they are insufficient to "meet the state's interest in punishment and deterrence" before sending someone to prison for nonpayment of a fine.[4]

Impact

Although the Bearden ruling required that the defendant in a case regarding not paying court fines can only be imprisoned if they "willfully" chose not to pay them, the Court did not define what "willfully" meant in this context. This has frequently led to judges having to determine whether someone who did not pay a fine was too poor to do so or not.[7] Some attorneys with many poor clients have argued that the requirement in Bearden that judges consider a defendant's ability to pay is almost never enforced.[2] In 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of Kevin Thompson, who had spent five days in a Georgia jail for not paying a traffic ticket, arguing that Bearden was intended to prevent just such situations from happening. Thompson's lawyer also claimed that the court did not consider alternatives to imprisonment, like community service, as required by Bearden.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Balko, Radley (21 October 2015). "A debtors’ prison in Mississippi". Washington Post. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 Shapiro, Joseph (21 May 2014). "Supreme Court Ruling Not Enough To Prevent Debtors Prisons". NPR. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  3. 1 2 Pishko, Jessica (25 February 2015). "Locked Up for Being Poor". The Atlantic. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 "Justices overturn jailing of man who was too poor to pay a fine". New York Times. 25 May 1983. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  5. ↑ "Bearden v. Georgia". JUSTIA. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  6. ↑ Wagner, Ann. "The Conflict over Bearden v Georgia in State Courts: Plea-Bargaining Probation Terms and the Specter of Debtors' Prison". University of Chicago Legal Forum 2010 (1).
  7. ↑ Shapiro, Joseph (19 May 2014). "As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price". NPR. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  8. ↑ Sneed, Tierney (6 February 2015). "Private Misdemeanor Probation Industry Faces New Scrutiny". US News & World Report. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
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