Here & Now

Assembly Promotes Constitutional Amendment for Bail Standard

Frederica Freyberg:

Prior to the governor’s address, the Republican-controlled Assembly passed a joint resolution that would put a constitutional amendment before voters. If approved by voters, the resolution would require the court to consider the severity of a person’s criminal record when determining their bail.

Robin Vos:

Now if you look at last session and you look at some of the concerns that we have had, I didn’t always support this idea. I always had concerns about making sure that anybody who says that they are innocent has the right to prove themselves innocent in a court of law. And that’s the whole point. You’re innocent until proven guilty. But I think the author has done a good job of making changes to this amendment to meet those concerns and allow us to move this bill forward and this constitutional amendment. What happened in Waukesha, and I’ll let the folks who represent that area — was a wake-up call for many of us who saw that in far too many circumstances, a criminal justice system puts the onus on the victim to be able to guarantee that their safety is protected as opposed to the onus on the perpetrator to make sure that they should be let out because they are not a danger to society.