Kings County Jail releases just 30 inmates to comply with California Judicial Council action

The Judicial Council of California recommends rules and actions for the California court system under California’s Constitution and under the leadership of the Chief Justice and the California State Supreme Court.

The emergency measure recently adopted is designed to reduce California’s jail populations in light of the COVID-19 crisis. The Emergency Bail Schedule applies to people currently held in jail, before trial, and anyone arrested on applicable offenses while the emergency rule is in place.

The emergency bail schedule, however, does outline 13 exceptions, allowing money bail to for people arrested for serious or violent felonies, domestic violence, DUIs, and several other offenses.

This new bail schedule likely makes bail $0 for almost all misdemeanors and most felonies.

The emergency bail schedule forced Kings County Sheriff David Robinson to compile a list of at least 69 inmates, all of whom may have met the Judicial Council’s emergency rules. “My staff worked diligently over the following days looking through our inmate list of almost 500 inmates and came up with a list of 69 jail inmates who may fit the new bail schedule criteria,” said Robinson.

Robinson also met with Kings County Presiding Judge Robert Burns and immediately implemented the order on new arrests as recommended by the Judicial Council. However, deciding on who gets released from the Kings County Jail was “more complicated,” said the Kings County sheriff. The statewide order gave local sheriffs until 5 p.m. on Monday, April 13, to implement the order. 

According to Robinson, some California judges adopted the new $0 bail retroactively to jail inmates without consideration for victims and the risk to public safety.

Robinson said he presented the list of 69 inmates to Kings County District Attorney Keith Fagundes and Superior Court Judge Burns, both of whom scoured the list and identified about 30 inmates from Robinson’s list, citing a “heightened concern” if the inmates are released.

On April 13, 2020, Presiding Judge Burns issued the order to release 30 of the 69 inmates. 

Of the 30 inmates ordered for release, 17 were previously released or released to other counties as follows: four inmates were released by the courts the previous week (2 of which were then picked up by other jurisdictions), one inmate was picked up by detainer by another jurisdiction, four inmates were released to GPS monitoring in other counties, and eight inmates with residences in other counties were cited out to appear at their next court date.

One of the Kings County Jail’s most visible inmates, former Lemoore Councilmember Holly Blair, was not released from custody.

Only 13 of the 69 inmates were released back into Kings County.  Four of those 13 inmates are monitored by Kings County Probation, and nine of the 13 inmates were cited to appear for their next court date.