King County Judge reaffirms that automatic jail bookings fees violate Constitutional due process rights.
King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick has found that Pierce County is liable in a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of people whose money was seized, without a hearing, when they were booked into the Pierce County jail. Judge Erlick’s ruling comes in a case brought by Seattle attorney Patrick Palace, with assistance from the Center for Justice’s Breean Beggs who serves as co-counsel in the action.
According to the Tacoma News Tribune, the ruling may force Pierce County to issue more than $630,000 (plus interest and attorney fees) to thousands of people booked into the Pierce County jail over a two year period. Pierce County stopped collecting the fees in late 2005.
The facts in the Pierce County case are very similar to those in a Spokane County class action case–brought by the Center for Justice on behalf of Spokane’s Shawn Huss and others–that was settled earlier this year. The stage was set for settlement in the Huss case after Federal District Court Judge Fred Van Sickle ruled in August 2006 that both the state’s law on jail booking fees and the policy enacted by Spokane County to collect them were unconstitutional because they “”deprive persons of their property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The first Pierce County action was filed shortly after Judge Van Sickle’s ruling and came to include class actions
brought by plaintiffs who were later not charged or acquitted of the charges against them, and plaintiffs who were later found guilty. Judge Erlick’s ruling was limited to the Pierce County practice and does not address the constitutionality of the state law.
“This ruling is an important victory,” Palace said, “because the judge’s decision makes clear that Pierce County officials are not above the law, that they cannot take shortcuts with the law, and they cannot financially profit from breaking the law.”
Beggs sees Judge Erlick’s ruling as solidifying the message the courts are sending to Washington state lawmakers and jailers.
“With rulings by both the Federal Court and a State Superior Court against two large and powerful counties who violated basic constitutional rights,” Beggs said, “the message has been sent statewide that government money-making schemes are never acceptable when they trample on the rights of citizens to have a fair hearing before the government takes their money.”
–CFJ
No comments yet.