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No Al, what's ridiculous is that judges are making people ebter expensive (and often #@$%!) counseling programs before they've even been convicted.
I wonder how you would feel if that person went out and killed your kid when perhaps some intervening could have helped?
I still didn't hear a rebutal to my issue.
I suspect that if it makes the appeal circuit, the judge will be found ultimately on legal ground.
Perhaps ekpolk will weigh in.
Here I am!
Al, here's the legal analysis. Yes, an accused is presumed innocent until proven and found guilty. That's obvious and well known. Less well understood is that generally speaking, except in cases of capital or life felonies (I'm putting the FL twist on this, but it's essentially applicable everywhere, with minor detail differences) that an accused is also presumed to be entitled to pre-trial release.
The "how to" has been answered with various court rules and case law. In FL, the judge is required to consider primarily: 1) the danger the accused reasonably poses to other persons, 2) the risk that the accused will flee and not appear at future court dates and trial, and 3) whether the accused presents a threat to the integrity of the justice system (this factor is most often applied to those who engage in vague threatening of witnesses, suspected evidence tamperers, etc.).
Weighing all these factors, the judge is required to impose the
least restrictive form of appropriate pre-trial restraint (consider how subjective that determination can be). The lightest form, of course, is ROR (release on recognizance), the most severe is being held "no bond". In between, where most cases fall, we see the requirement to post monetary bond, often supplemented with non-monetary conditions upon release (such as no alc consumption, stay-away orders in violence cases, periodic check-ins, and so forth). It sounds like the issue in this thread is the propriety of certain steps that usually follow a conviction being used as pre-trial release conditions.
All this is murkier than it seems, because one could argue, as was done here, that this is a punitive/rehab step, appropriate only after conviction; whereas on the other side, one could say that the judge was taking reasonable (albeit pushing it...) steps to ensure that he was not granting pre-trial release to someone who is going to go right back out and commit another DUI tomorrow. Personally, I think this will fail in most places, but it's certainly a legitimately debatable point.
