Background of the LDF Attack on New York's Bail System 1

Press Release
August 1, 1969

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Background of the LDF Attack on New York's Bail System 1 preview

Date is approximate (written as "August-September 1969").

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  • Press Releases, Volume 6. Background of the LDF Attack on New York's Bail System 1, 1969. 64a4f9ad-b992-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/5b7000cd-7b03-4748-a72d-98a524fc75bd/background-of-the-ldf-attack-on-new-yorks-bail-system-1. Accessed August 19, 2025.

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President 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Director Counsel 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

Director, Public Relations 
NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. ae DeVore, Ir, 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

B25 

August - September 1969 

BACKGROUND OF THE LDF ATTACK ON NEW YORK'S BAIL SYSTEM 

The U.S. District Court here has been asked to declare New York's 

present money bail system unconstitutional. 

Argument was made by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 

Inc. (LDF) in its amicus brief filed in the case of 13 Black Panthers 

presently in jail. 

The LDF brief insists that alternatives to money bail be con- 

sidered--alternatives which would not discriminate against the poor-- 

as means of ensuring appearance at trial. 

The LDF brief also asks the Court tc rule that when money bail is 

used, it will be set in an amount that the individual defendant can 

afford to pay. Hence, the poor will have the same right to pre-trial 

release as the rich. 

The use of bail as a means of preventive detention in New York 

City has been the focus of action by the NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund, Inc. for over three years. 

Jack Greenberg, LDF director-counsel, maintains that too often 

punitive high bail is used as a means to detain, to punish, and to 

prejudice a fair trial. Excessive bail is of prime concern to LDF 

because 1) it denies the defendant his rights to due process under the 

14th Amendment by punishing him before trial in violation of pre- 

sumption of innocence, and 2) it denies the poor the right of equal 

protection because they don't have the money to post bail. 

The question of excessive bail as a means of preventive detention 

and as a source of discrimination against the poor is an issue of 

utmost importance to criminal and civil libertarian lawyers during 

this time of social unrest and has always been of major concern to LDF. 

Prosecutors and judges continue to recommend and set bail in 

dollar amounts, with no articulation of reasons why these amounts are 

required, with little or no information about the defendant before 

them, and with either a conscious intent to detain or an apparent lack 

of concern as to whether detention will be the result of the money 

bail. 

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