A rabbi was on his way home from a religious study hall in the heavily-Orthodox Pico-Robertson section of Los Angeles in late April when he said he noticed a van driving slowly behind him.
The young father, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the driver seemed to follow him down an alley off Pico Boulevard. Moments later, he said, the man leaped out of his van. Surveillance video showed the rabbi being shoved into the alcove of building and choked.
“I was yelling for help at the top of my lungs,” the rabbi said. “In my mind I’m accepting this is how it’s going to end.”
As the attacker climbed back into his van, he shouted “Free Palestine,” the rabbi said.
The suspect was arrested on May 19, and L.A. County prosecutors asked that he be held on $125,000 bail in connection with a hate crime assault, noting that he was a repeat offender with prior violent felony convictions.
Instead, the judge set him free without bail, saying a recent California Supreme Court case had forced the court’s hand.
The April 30 Supreme Court ruling, known as the Kowalczyk decision after a Bay Area man who sued with a claim that he had been unlawfully held on $75,000 bail after being accused of using stolen credit cards to buy a $7 cheeseburger, is the second time in five years that the state’s high court has ordered sweeping changes to the state’s bail policies.
In 2021, the court ruled Californians cannot be held in pretrial detention simply because they’re too poor to pay. But critics of cash bail say little actually changed as a result. Legal experts say the latest ruling is different, functionally outlawing cash bail in most cases, and strictly capping the amount in others.
Over the past month, so-called Kowalczyk motions have flooded California courts, compelling judges to release people they would previously have held on bail. Meanwhile, courts are struggling under the additional burden of reviewing bail determinations for scores of defendants already in custody.
“This is one of the most consequential and horrific rulings that I have seen since becoming the D.A.,” said San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins, an outspoken critic of the decision, who called the court’s move to curb bail “carte blanche” for California criminals.
Reformers say the shift is both legally necessary and socially prudent. They point to decades of data showing pretrial detention causes widespread harm without reducing crime or increasing appearances in court.
“There have been rigorous studies all around the country: Money bail does absolutely nothing to protect the public at all,” said Salil Dudani, a senior attorney for Civil Rights Corps, a legal advocacy organization.
But barely four weeks in, Jenkins and other prosecutors say many of those being released without bail are repeat offenders with long rap sheets for boosting cars, toting guns and selling fentanyl.
“We had 29 arraignments set for this afternoon — we’re only filing motions to keep two people in,” Jenkins said in an interview Wednesday morning.
The Kowalczyk controversy hinges on a distinctly Golden State problem: the meaning of “affordability.”
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote in the unanimous decision that “unless there is a valid basis for detention,” judges must “set bail at a level the arrestee can reasonably afford.”
“This amounts to a real right to bail in hundreds of thousands of cases, which previously in California might have led to detention,” said Kellen R. Funk, a legal historian at Columbia Law School. “This will make California a [leader] in actually practicing what its bail law says.”
The California Constitution defines a large number of offenses where bail can be denied outright, among them rape, burglary and arson. But it also requires that almost everyone else be either released on their own recognizance or offered an opportunity to bond out.
In practice, reformers say, bail amounts have largely been set by vibes, with judges given broad leeway to use discretion.
“Setting bail is just picking a number,” Funk said. “In all of the history of money bail there has never been an attempt to rationalize the money amounts. The money amounts of the bonds are literally picked out of the air.”
California defendants could already challenge those amounts at bail reduction hearings, but the state’s high court judges said they sought to remedy the inconsistencies and protect the rights of low-income defendants.
“A system in which a person’s right to liberty turns on financial resources compromises public safety and raises equal protection and due process concerns,” Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban wrote in his concurrence.
But the new decision doesn’t define what constitutes “reasonably attainable” bail.
Jenkins was among the California prosecutors who urged the court not to upend the status quo. She voiced frustration over the subjectivity that she says now shapes the process.
“For an unhoused person with no job it might be $1. For someone who’s employed as a MUNI driver it could be $1,000,” Jenkins said. “It’s all relative to what they represent to the court.”
The bail ruling arrives at a moment when many of the state’s most significant criminal justice reforms have already been rolled back. A 2018 law that would have eliminated cash bail was reversed by a 2020 ballot measure. Four years later, an overwhelming majority of California voters approved Proposition 36, reversing a 2014 change that had commuted some nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors.
Jenkins took office in 2022 after San Francisco voters recalled her progressive predecessor, Chesa Boudin, amid boiling anger over property crime and perceived lawlessness. Across the Bay Bridge in Alameda County, fellow reformist D.A. Pamela Price was recalled in 2024 and replaced by Ursula Jones Dickson, who quickly undid many of Price’s signature policies. That same year, Los Angeles voters ousted George Gascón in favor of tough-on-crime challenger Nathan Hochman.
Even as violent crime across the state plunged to historic lows, frustration over public disorder, fentanyl deaths and sprawling homeless encampments persists, influencing contests in the upcoming June 2 primary, including the L.A. mayor and city attorney races.
The most recent Los Angeles County Quality of Life Index survey out of UCLA shows perception of public safety losing ground even as property crime has decreased modestlyover the same period.
Reformists blame politicians for the disconnect.
“There is relentless misinformation both about the prevalence of those kinds of offenses and about the cure,” said Dudani, the Civil Rights Corps. attorney.
Politicians, in turn, blamed the judiciary.
“No one knows what goes on in these courthouses,” Jenkins said. “No one knows that judges in their ivory towers who don’t live in the communities affected by crime are even issuing these rulings.”
Crime victims like the Pico-Robertson rabbi say they just want to feel safe. The defendant in his case has pleaded not guilty and is now awaiting trial.
“It’s a struggle,” the rabbi said. “A lot of people are worried. Nobody wants to take any chances.”
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