Ken's media partner Josh Barro sums this up in a way that makes a lot of sense to me:
This is, in various ways, unfair. But the point of the bail system isn’t doing
justice. It’s ensuring that people show up for trial.
I hear a lot of movie theater plots about SBF evading trial, but he's a goober, and whatever happens, he's going to wind up in prison, and the threads here about his bail are in retrospect going to read a little silly.
I agree it's not about doing justice. But I still think we need the overall system to be just. I don't object to pretrial people getting home confinement generally, and I can grudgingly accept it here on the theory that the Feds must be pretty sure he's not going to pull a Ghosn. [1] But I have real questions about exactly who isn't getting this kind of generous treatment.
Objective of the justice system is to give defendants who are presumed innocent as much Freedom as possible. The chances of I'm alleged white collars Criminal spinning up a new Ponzi scheme before their trial date is low.
The chance of a alleged drug Smuggler or violent Criminal reoffending before trial is higher.
While the justice system should be blind to the economic situation of the defendant, that doesn't mean it has to be blind to common sense
But if we just look at the chances of reoffending, I think confinement to one's parents house with an ankle bracelet and frequent checkins is more likely to prevent drug smuggling than further financial crimes. Most drug smugglers at least can recognize that what they did is a crime, so they appear to be ahead of SBF here.
And my question here is really not just about broad categories of crime, but about specifics of the situation. What do the stats look like for, say, cherubic and well spoken young white men from upper-class backgrounds compared with other groups? I know that I as a youth got away with a lot, and I suspect it was due to factors like that. Seeing SBF get the soft landing here makes me wonder how things go for people who don't look and sound like him.
applied in the sentiments here and in general also seems to the fact that everyone just believes that Sam Bankman Fried is guilty. he hasn't been proven as such yet, and the system exists as such for good reason. there are ample examples of people who have also been incarcerated while innocent
I am not sure if you are implying this, but Ghosn's case is far from clear-cut in the way that SBF's is.The hilarious implication that all the bad apples at Nissan were non-Japanese foreigners was far too convenient to be true.
What's definitely clear cut is that via an elaborate plan he fled the country to avoid getting any of those questions answered definitively, which is the part that concerns me in relation to SBF. As many people have mentioned, pretrial detention can't be about actual guilt, just the likelihood to show up to trial.
That's not a very useful bit of information, is it?
We'd expect a very high conviction rate in very bad systems because of corruption and because such systems might be meant just for show.
However, we'd also expect a very high conviction rate in very good systems. Before a case gets to trial in a very good system first it would be investigated by police. Only if the police think there is a worthwhile case would it go to prosecutors. Then some prosecutor has to decide they have enough evidence to stand a good chance of conviction. There would probably be more review taking into account overall prosecutorial load to make sure they won't be devoting limited resources to a case they might lose.
The only cases that reach trial should be cases that the prosecutor is very sure they will win, so of course we should see a high conviction rate if the prosecutors are competent.
It’s actually 99.8%. Yes, prosecutorial discretion can account for much of that, but you don’t get to 99.8% without something in the system being broken. Not all cases are cut and dry, some cases should go to trial and fail. 99.8% stretches credulity beyond reason. Japan is under criticism from human rights organizations for forced confessions, due to being able to interrogate suspects for weeks without them allowed to contact family or a lawyer. There is no right to remain silent. Even with the rights granted to suspects in the USA, forced confessions are common. In comparison, Japanese suspects don’t have a chance.
People with something to lose can be controlled through it. People with nothing to lose can only be controlled through violence. If you wish your use of violence to be limited by necessity and proportionality then you will be gentler with the rich.
If you wish to treat everyone the same then you must either use excessive violence in some cases, or accept that others are not going to be controlled.
It’s good that the courts use the more peaceful option of going after the defendant’s property instead of his person, when available. But obviously it’s only available when there’s property to go after.
The idea that only rich people have something to lose is a) ridiculously classist, and b) not applicable here: SBF supposedly doesn't have any money to lose, so by your logic we should be controlling him with violence.
SBF, regardless of the truth of his claim that he only has $100k in a particular bank account, almost certainly has anywhere from some to quite a lot of wealth to lose [0] (whether any of it is likely to remain after fines, forfeitures, etc. in the current criminal case is another story.)
[0] e.g., there is currently a legal dispute between SBF, FTX, and others over who owns a $400+ million stake in Robinhood.
Wealth isn’t just personal property in your own name or under your exclusive control. It’s almost always social, tied up in families, relationships, credit lines, trusts, companies, etc. And part of its power over you is your responsibilities toward and relationships with the others in its circle. You don’t want to be the guy who vaporizes your kid’s college fund. Or in SBF’s case, your parents’ house. Even if you technically have access to them when push comes to shove. (Maybe you think he would! But he found someone to place a very high stakes bet that he won’t).
It’s true that your access to resources in a pinch is not always aligned with cultural or consumption-based class markers. For example the family in Winter’s Bone clearly reads as poor, even though Jessup’s bond is paid-off house and acres of timber forest. Conversely, you could imagine a financier whose relationships are all burned and whose assets are all wiped out. But having something to lose is still going to be correlated with class on balance.
> But having something to lose is still going to be correlated with class on balance.
I look forward to seeing your data on that, but knowing plenty of both rich and poor people, I'm not going to assume it's correct. A lot of the poorest people I know are the ones richest in social ties. And vice versa, at least if we're counting the sort of meaningful ties that would make one more likely to stay in one place while the machinery of justice works.
This is exactly the right way to look at it. Especially when pretrial incarceration is maybe the single most effective tool for extracting a plea agreement (even from the wrongfully accused!)
Serious question: Would you like to increase the systems overreach by incarcerating people which can post a reasonable bond, but therefore make the system more fair?
People who have nothing have nothing to loose when dodging bond. Rich people have something to loose, so they can held by posting a bond. There's a tradeoff between making the system fair (nobody gets out of jail) and making the system as lenient as possible (people who can post bond get out - but be aware that quite a few innocent people await trial, which would then be jailed as well).
Poor people don't have money to go on the run to Costa Rica and live on a beach for the rest of their lives.
Is this even a real problem? It's not 1920 anymore you can't do anything without papers.
>But I have real questions about exactly who isn't getting this kind of generous treatment.
You've uncovered the unjust nature of the cash bail system as a whole. The efforts being made to get rid of it in California are a huge step forward toward making the system more equitable.
In retail stores, I’ve seen it with my own eyes all across the Bay Area.
It’s gone from occasional, ‘tries to hide it’ shoplifting to brazen ‘runs off with a shopping cart full of tools/baby food/electronics in the daylight daily’ in a handful of years.
Stores are changing their display practices to try to compensate (locking up anything over a certain dollar threshold), but it’s easy to bypass. Last week when talking to one guy (Home Depot in Santa Clara) while buying a power tool, he said they’d had over $14k taken in the last few weeks alone from that store. I’ve seen folks do the runs myself while picking up Electronics too. The staff just sighs, takes a note, and continues on with their day.
Notably, it seems like it’s co-ordinated. when talking to the staff, they say it’s a different person each time, but very frequent now. shrug
As long as we're using dueling anecdotes, I've lived in SF 20+ years, and as far as I can tell crime levels are about the same.
Is it possible that criminal groups are doing some organized shoplifting? I'd believe it. But this may be just a change in method for existing criminals. Or it may be that we're hearing about it more because it's a topic that has gained sudden media interest. In any case, that cuts against your theory that the cops don't care, because doing it in bulk or in an organized fashion will turn it from a misdemeanor to a felony, making cops much more interested. And indeed, SF just announced results from exactly that kind of operation: https://sfist.com/2022/12/16/sfpd-touts-60-arrests-in-new-re...
It makes it harder to keep them off the street, which makes departments deprioritize arresting people for those crimes. Same as 5150 for mentally unstable folks on the street. When it’s clearly a revolving door, folks stop trying to spend so much effort pushing people into it.
It’s often part of the same platform too - at least for Chesa Boudin.
It doesn't "make" departments deprioritize that. They choose it.
Note also you are once again conflating pre-trial detainment with post-trial punishment. People presumed innocent should not be generally kept off the streets.
Even given the (dubious and ineffective) goal of keeping people off the streets, a removal of cash bail would in theory make them work even harder, so that a) true repeat offenders would receive the sort of escalating penalties that would put them away for a long time, and b) people failing to abide by the terms of their non-cash bail would not be allowed back out again. So the end of cash bail should make them more dedicated.
But Boudin is material here. SF cops sandbagged on doing their job because they didn't like him. He was foursquare for a modicum police accountability and they hated that. And if you'd like to post nominal facts about the Boudin recall, please don't use ones from a publication wholly funded by one of the people who paid for the Boudin recall.
The retail stores are less able to handle shrink than they could before because they have serious competition from online sales.
They have tighter margins due to competition, so they lock stuff down more, leading to a much worse shipping experience, leading to more people shopping online. It's a death spiral.
There's certainly more reporting of shoplifting in SF in the last couple years, but it's only a part of the story, and evidently not a general trend, or we would see it in higher level statistics.
Covid was the biggest bail reform experiment in history. Typically for any non-violent crime in the US, people get ROR'd (released on own recognizance) so long as they don't have any outstanding warrants. Bail is for people that have a history of skipping court (outstanding warrants). During Covid, everyone got ROR'd regardless of outstanding warrants, because getting caught shoplifting and the cops find 3 points of meth in their pocket shouldn't be death sentence. Normally that type of person would be given a $5000 bail if this was their second time getting caught. If they were unemployed, they would dry out in jail and hopefully come out the other side on a better path. During covid everyone was released on zero bail. Homelessness and crime spiked across the US.
There are places that think it is a good idea to make covid bail policies permanent. The experiment is running now.
Even the Netflix documentary showed a short section on Ghosn's misuse of funds and not even on a large enough scale (Billions) to get such strong reaction by the Japanese justice system.
Plus I believe that any justice system that traces its roots on a past hierarchical system (ex: monarchy, dictatorship, communism) without any revolutions to change it is heavily biased & distorted from reality for other political inclinations.
The Ghosn thing is an aside; the relevant part is that he indisputably committed more crimes to avoid facing a trial.
As to the latter bit, I think that's all current justice systems. Certainly the one here in the US, which inherited English common law and then added on a two-tiered justice system for race-based slavery.
In Bahamas, there were stories of how awful the jail SBF was held is, but only one (iirc) managed to let out the kitty that he was held in infirmary, and not in the scary cells every story talked about.
One reason to stay within the law is that even due process can be a rather nasty experience, and generally to be avoided if possible. The threat of rape in US prisons is repeatedly referenced in "cultural products" coming out of LA. It is pretty odd when you think about it: systemic abuse is taking place and blockbuster films reference it and apparently the government doesn't care.
So sure, the bail is for preventing flight. It is not about justice. But ultimately the "justice system" is also not there to do "justice": it is ultimately there to insure societal stability and harmony. When a people get the sense that "the system" is stacked, and gives preferential treatment to special people, it undermines the very purpose of a justice system.
So tptacek, the justice people are talking about is simply the obvious this: If Joe Schmoe had pulled the scam of century, he would have had ample time to meet his cell mates in Bahamas in "scary prison", and, also get to know the fellows in cell block whatever over here, in the land of "sodomy in prison is a feature not a bug" USA.
>So sure, the bail is for preventing flight. It is not about justice. But ultimately the "justice system" is also not there to do "justice": it is ultimately there to insure societal stability and harmony. When a people get the sense that "the system" is stacked, and gives preferential treatment to special people, it undermines the very purpose of a justice system.
Okay, but what's the alternative here? Have a bail/trial by public opinion so the results are maximally aligned with what the public wants?
There's also the alternative of making the justice system more humane, but like you said:
>One reason to stay within the law is that even due process can be a rather nasty experience, and generally to be avoided if possible. The threat of rape in US prisons is repeatedly referenced in "cultural products" coming out of LA. It is pretty odd when you think about it: systemic abuse is taking place and blockbuster films reference it and apparently the government doesn't care.
The government doesn't care because the public doesn't care. It's hard to garner sympathy for suspects. I suspect that in the depictions you speak of, the thought that goes through the average audience's head is "criminal getting their just desserts", not "this is a failure of the criminal justice system because someone is effectively being punished before they're convicted".
Does that mean denying bail for everyone, or only for the people who are pariahs in the media (basically the "Have a bail/trial by public opinion" from my previous comment)?
The key issue is societal harm. For example above discusses bail considerations for serial rapists, etc. I pointed out that societal harm can also occur when a perception of distinct treatment for different classes of society reaches a critical threshold of society, it will result in societal harm. It's a sort of meta-harm to society, specially in today's political environment, societal harm to the people of United of States of America is anything that increases divisions, and diminishes trust in institutions, in my opinion.
That sounds pretty close to "Have a bail/trial by public opinion" from my previous comment, as well as questions raised by philosophers regarding utilitarianism and the justice system eg. "is it ethical to convict an innocent person to placate the masses?".
All inmates at that Bahamanian prison are originally held in the infirmary. The administrators were very clear that after the intake period he would be moved to standard cells.
Meanwhile, if someone pulls off the scam of the century, they are no longer a Joe Schmoe. They will have a lot of money to spread around while the scam is happening. Especially in a small Caribbean nation.
> So tptacek, the justice people are talking about is simply the obvious this: If Joe Schmoe had pulled the scam of century, he would have had ample time to meet his cell mates in Bahamas in "scary prison", and, also get to know the fellows in cell block whatever over here, in the land of "sodomy in prison is a feature not a bug" USA.
Thank you for spelling this out. It's not ok that this sort of baying for blood is given a cloak of righteousness when it is aimed at a suspect of criminal conduct.
If we're interested in justice, then bail reform is small potatoes: make fines for crimes scale based on income and wealth. It a billionaire, a decamillionaire, and a minimum wage laborer should all be proportionately penalized for breaking the law. Having large financial resources shouldn't reduce financial criminal penalties to irrelevance.
In many cases rich people aren’t punished in real terms at all, they actually make money. How many times have we seen rich people defrauding the public or causing them harm, only for them to be given some slap-on-the-wrist fine years later. Meanwhile, they have been investing their ill-gotten gains and making more than the eventual fines.
It is huge potato, because being hold in jail before trial puts huge pressure on people. If the charges are small, they are very likely to just sign plea deal while in exact same charge outside they would fought a case.
Layers and Criminal reform advocates talk about this a lot, actually. Being in pre trial jail is actively destroying their lives. It is one of reasons for why most cases enver even end up in trial.
There are a lot of impoverished, incompetent criminals who should be getting bail if the "I couldn't run from justice if I wanted to" argument was reasonable.
If a person ripped off a million people, it’s a tentative assumption that they wouldn’t rip off their parents too.
If my child was facing decades in prison for a non-violent crime with mitigating circumstances then I would sacrifice my home in a heartbeat, so its tentative from that direction too. I’m sure SBF could also pay them back easily enough.
He likely has substantial resources to aid any escape and a history of extradition. So he has the means.
We have the ankle tag, but if that is a foolproof solution then there wouldn’t even need to be a bail system as pretty much everyone could be tagged until trial.
If you were facing 100 years in prison after the fall from grace he has had, surely a private jet to Russia looks to have very appealing odds?
Unless they flee too, to a country that doesn't have extradition. Given the good chance he has countless millions stashed somewhere, this is definitely a non-zero chance. It is also made more likely due to the political connections SBF and his family have due to the tens of millions of dollars he has funneled to politicians. While not necessarily likely, it is far from impossible (anyone who thinks it is should look up Mark Rich). If anyone should be locked up without bail while waiting trial, it is SBF.
Every politician they gave money to is trying hard to distance themselves. Nobody is going to stick their neck out for SBF or his family. What on earth would be in it for them?
Besides, why is SBF in the USA right now? He could have tried to stay in the Bahamas. He came here because he knows that his chances with other countries’ justice systems are far worse. And what country in the world would give him shelter? He ripped people off all over the world. Anywhere he might go, there is a strong chance he would be arrested there.
>Every politician they gave money to is trying hard to distance themselves. Nobody is going to stick their neck out for SBF or his family. What on earth would be in it for them?
What was in it for Bill Clinton when he pardoned Mark Rich?
>Besides, why is SBF in the USA right now? He could have tried to stay in the Bahamas.
In the Bahamas he was in jail. Hours after landing in the USA he is in a mansion in California. Is it really that hard to understand?
> In the Bahamas he was in jail. Hours after landing in the USA he is in a mansion in California. Is it really that hard to understand?
Yes, it is. I’d endure extreme life threatening hardship for a few months if it meant a decent chance at avoiding a likely multi decade prison sentence, even if I got to hang out in a mansion for a few months before prison. It’s hard to imagine a rational person doing otherwise.
> When you've got personal wealth in the hundreds of millions, yeah, "hollywood plots" are indeed a concern.
SBF doesn't have that, though. He lost access to FTX's funds. He doesn't have anything he can give to anyone that would motivate them to do that for him. No money, no influence, no ability to reward anyone in any way. He is poison and nobody wants anything to do with him.
I was speaking to the issue (that you raised) of whether SBF has allies motivated to help him. On that issue, I responded that there were people still willing to have their entire net worths wiped out to help him.
Whether they actually have some arbitrarily higher figure is not relevant to that point.
I obviously don't have the numbers, but I would think a few billionaires a year, and lots of multimillioners. Add that up over 50 years and you probably have a pretty decent sample size
In any specific jurisdiction? Highly unlikely. There are only 3.3k billionaires globally. For those specific crimes? Even less likely.
My guess (but numbers hard to come by, to my point), is there have only been a handful of billionaires arrested for anything, even in most states. Ever.
There are several orders of magnitude difference between billionaires and multi millionaires. They aren’t even on the same page.
Off the top of my head Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind and Sunny Balwani must have been close. Epstein was also pretty close.
When I Google Billionaire arrested I get a flood of responses with names.
I would argue that at least individuals with 100 plus million have the similar capacity for flight AS billionaires. You could probably come up with an extensive list of US celebrities that have been arrested in this category
To take a step back, what do you think SBFs chance of skipping bail is? If you were to wager, what percentage would you put it at?
I'm willing to concede that we don't have a ton of apples to apples comparators. I do think there is a lot of general data, but as you point out, there are a lot of caviats.
This is a lazy joke about Jeffrey Epstein, who Ken White is also quite certain killed himself; the conspiracy theories about Epstein depend on people's movie-plot misunderstandings of the competence of federal penitentiary workers and their managers (in his telling [and thus my belief]).
But why would a formerly super wealthy sex addict who always got whatever he wanted possibly want to kill himself when facing life in prison? It just doesn't make any sense.
If this was meant to be sarcastic, you should add an /s tag. I've seen too many posts essentially arguing exactly what you are saying but that were actually serious.
Prison conditions in the U.S. are such that I wouldn't fault someone facing down a life sentence from considering a quicker option out.
Honestly, I don't even know what the point of prison in this situation is. It won't get anyone their money back, and he's unlikely to be in a position where he can reoffend in the future.
I suppose there's the deterrent angle, but I'm not convinced that there's a meaningful difference between a 10 year sentence and a life sentence as a deterrent.
Fair, but it remains to be seen if he was stealing for personal gain (embezzlement), or because he had a gambling addiction and was trying to keep his companies solvent.
"I'll just borrow these customer assets until I make it back" probably isn't a thing that someone would be deterred from whether it was 10 years or life. People make crazy gambles all the time for a lot less, and end up indebted to bookies who kill them.
He'll obviously never be in a position where he can make this mistake again, and I think life in prison doesn't fit the crime, especially for a first-time offender.
If he was stealing for personal gain, then sure, throw the book at him. But the available information doesn't make it clear if that's the case yet.
And that’s why we have such long sentences in the US. A few years of prison is quite a strong deterrent already. But voters say that they deserve more than that.
Even if life is precious, isn’t it up to the person facing the situation to decide that for themselves? It’s pretty easy for me to tell someone their life is precious when I don’t have to live their life.
You are probably talking about the Frank Pentangeli or (real life) Jeffrey Epstein style of suicide, not the "boo hoo the mental health clinic needs to hand out free Prozac but doesn't" sort.
But I don't think so. I'll give it a 1 percent chance of suicide, a 1 percent chance of flight to Israel (they likely won't want him) and a 98 percent chance of rutabaga patch guard duty at Club Fed for 20 years.
Note that his girlfriend, despite her femme fatale good looks and secondary school level calculus knowledge squealed like a piggy to the law, allowing her to altogether avoid the nasty shared toilet at the women's lockup. Pretty sweet.
I get the downvoted. Now all you who downvoted: so you have eyes on all those other rich people in jail? Is there a webcam? So how do you know they are there?
> and whatever happens, he's going to wind up in prison, and the threads here about his bail are in retrospect going to read a little silly.
I think you're missing the point.
The guy broke the law to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars, and he gets to sit around at home while waiting for trial. He is with his family, living however he wants. Eating great food, drinking, relaxing. Enjoying himself.
Regular criminals who break the law to the tune of hundreds of dollars are forced to sit in jail while they wait for trial. Jail sucks. You do NOT get to enjoy yourself.
> The guy broke the law to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars, and he gets to sit around at home while waiting for trial. He is with his family, living however he wants. Eating great food, drinking, relaxing. Enjoying himself.
He hasn't been convicted of a crime. Why should he be in jail?
> Regular criminals who break the law to the tune of hundreds of dollars are forced to sit in jail while they wait for trial. Jail sucks. You do NOT get to enjoy yourself.
It sounds like you support bail reform then, which has been a big thing recently in California and New York!
> That's the point.
The point absolutely is NOT to imprison people who have not been convicted of a crime. The point is to imprison people who have been convicted of a crime, and then maybe also temporarily imprison people pre-trial if they pose an imminent threat to the community (which SBF does not).
He hasn't been convicted. When he is, my guess is he spends essentially the rest of his life in prison. I don't much care what he's doing right now. It's unfair that people poorer than him spend the same time in lockup. But the bail system's treatment of SBF is so far from the top of my list of things to be concerned about, my first approximation of it is that it simply doesn't matter. You can feel differently!
The rest of his life in prison? You'll be sorely wrong by a long shot. Have you looked at any precedents? Jeff Skilling, for one, is already out. More recently, Elizabeth Holmes only received 11 years.
SBF will do more time than Holmes. Perhaps I'm underestimating just how young a goober he is; I don't think he'll get actual life, and 20 years for SBF gets him out when he's 45, which, oh shit, that's roughly how old I am. So: fair enough. He'll be in federal prison for a long time. That's what I meant to convey.
Weirdly she's free until she has to turn herself in on April 23rd 2023. Somehow I figured when you got sentenced, to prison, you got taken away to prison. I guess when you are rich, you get some time to do some last things before you go away?
It's not just rich people. Self-surrender/voluntary surrender is a reasonable thing for the courts to allow if they think you will show up. You can terminate your lease, store or sell your belongings, make arrangements for who takes your dog, marry (or not) your fiance etc. Better for avoiding recidivism if you can come back to things in stasis as opposed to restarting with nothing. The typical timeframe is around 2 weeks, but appeals might lengthen it.
I think it's fairly standard if you were released on bail prior to sentencing, but I don't have the statistics
She got pregnant to delay her prison time. There's also precedent for delaying reporting to prison for things like going to your child's graduation or something. I guess if a person is not a flight risk before sentencing then they're not treated as a risk after sentencing either.
If they aren't flight risk Before sentencing, and are still not also a flight risk After sentencing, why aren't they simply put under house arrest? Why should society pay to house, feed, cloth, guard, and medically maintain, and entertain them?
according to the state of California it cost them over $106 thousand per inmate per year. Surely at that price letting them take care of themselves is better for any nonviolent crime, or any crime where the odds of recidivism during their sentence while under house arrest is sufficiently low?
as those given house arrest have lower recidivism rates than those that go to prison I can accept a more lenient punishment that is more effective in preventing further crime. those under house arrest don't have their lives destroyed as totally as those going to prison so after their punishment are more able to reintegrate into society. for example many sentenced to house arrest with electronic monitoring are allowed to continue working while under house arrest, as they are never quit working they don't have to face the stigma against employing felons that prevent many ex-convicts from finding new employment after release and they aren't then driven to further crimes simply to make ends meet.
She is ~6 months pregnant and the judge allowed her to give birth out of prison before serving her time, jesus christ. This is a humane accommodation for a pregnant woman; she still has to serve her time after birth.
Madoff was sentenced to 150 years, and even though he pled guilty, sentencing still took about 3 months. A lot of thought and legal process went into it.
Those "regular criminals" who sit in jail awaiting trial are often not charged with Federal offenses. They are subject to a different court and jail system which has a different set of rules about bail.
Also, you seem pretty eager to make people suffer in jail even though they have not been convicted of a crime. Just because it sometimes happens doesn't justify it happening to everyone.
FWIW "regular criminals" routinely get bail. Even murder suspects do; around half of them. Despite that, there are some obvious issues with cash bail, which is why bail reform is a major area of legislation in some places. Several states have recently switched from cash bail to a points system.
That points system seems like an infinitely better idea than advocating that shitty conditions and mistreatment be applied evenly across all people. Presumption of innocence, right? No matter what we all think, SBF has not been proven -- in the way that matters -- to have broken the law.
So? That's how it should be if it's deemed by a judge that you're not likely to flee. You have a presumption of innocence and should not be detained if it can be helped.
FTX was incorporated in the Bahamas, and he was living there long before this all went down. If anything, many people including myself were surprised that he did not flee the Bahamas (which is quite cozy with the US) to a less extradition-friendly locale the moment the shit hit the fan.
What did his bail terms say? If they said stay in the county, for example, then he fled regardless of where his home was. If you breach bail terms (without good reason, eg preventing a death) you should never get out on bail again.
He was in the Bahamas for a few years before any of this went down. He probably took trips to the US (and Hong Kong and other places) for various reasons, but his main residency was the Bahamas.
