While the United States Supreme Court ultimately declined to review a 2017 lawsuit claiming the use of Cullman County’s bail procedures unconstitutionally favor wealthier defendants, legal experts felt the case had the potential to make a nationwide impact.

The original lawsuit, filed by Bradley Hester, claimed his right to pretrial liberty was violated when, after claiming indigent status following his 2017 arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia, he was forced to sleep on the floor of his overcrowded jail cell with an open and bleeding spider bite wound as he awaited trial because he was unable to pay his $1,000 cash bond. That bond was issued using a predetermined “one-size-fits all” bail schedule.

After a divided panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a federal injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala in November 2022, the plaintiff’s counsel — which includes representatives from the Civil Rights Corps., Southern Poverty Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project — filed a petition with SCOTUS claiming the decision was reached by ignoring the district court’s factual findings.

After reviewing the case, University of Alabama associate professor of law Russell Gold told The Times he felt the 11th Circuit was indeed “playing fast and loose” with the evidence presented to the District Court.

“Trial courts are supposed to collect evidence and appellate courts are supposed to respect that evidence unless it’s clearly erroneous. The factual findings weren’t even challenged in the 11th Circuit, so I do think the 11th Circuit is playing fast and loose with the evidence in this case. The dissenting opinion [from Judge Robin Rosenbaum] said exactly that,” Gold said. “I think it’s a real problem what the 11th Circuit did here.”

The American Bar Association, the Legal Scholars of Bail — professors Sandra G. Mayson and Kellen R. Funk from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School — and the CATO Institute, each filed amicus briefs on behalf of the plaintiff saying Cullman County’s use of bail “erodes a core constitutional right.”

The brief filed by the ABA stated, “Although Cullman County claims that it must detain defendants to assess dangerousness and flight risk, it requires that assessment only for indigent defendants. As the district court found, ‘the system is discriminatory: not all criminal defendants who pose a real and present danger to the public are indigent, but Cullman County detains only indigent criminal defendants who pose a real and present danger to the public. Dangerous defendants with means enjoy pretrial liberty.”

Representing the plaintiff, Senior Staff Attorney with SPLC Micah West said, because of conflicting rulings in lower courts — as well as the past SCOTUS rulings — in regard to bail reform throughout the country, the case was poised to create the first national ruling on the topic in decades.

“This case is a good vehicle for the Supreme Court because the 11th Circuit’s decision conflicts with other circuit courts, state supreme courts and the SCOTUS, which have all found that pretrial liberty is a fundamental right. By contrast, the 11th Circuit declared that there is ‘no fundamental right to pretrial release’ meaning that accused persons may be detained indefinitely with minimal process. This case presents a good vehicle to resolve that split of authority on a question that impacts hundreds of thousands of people across the country every day,” West said in an emailed statement to The Times.