So, I hear they secretly held his hearing on Monday morning. Are they actually holding him indefinitely, or is it 200 days at $50 per day? Of course, by then over six months has gone by so he'll "owe" another $10,000 by then, right? Then they can just put him back in for another 200 days. Am I misunderstanding how this might work? If not, how many other men are in this trap?
The $50/day thing is for fines, not judgments; we don't (officially) have debtors prisons in the US. You can pay the State's fines by serving jail time, but if there's a judgment saying that he owes his X a certain amount per month, he can't "pay" that by serving time.
No one's posted the actual details of the charges, but I expect he's being held for contempt of court - that is, willfully refusing to abide by the order the court gave him.
However, proving a contempt charge requires that they establish that he was given a lawful order (a judge can't order you to go murder someone, and hold you in contempt for refusing), that he failed to obey the order, and that he was capable of obeying it. It's that third part that would likely apply in this case, if his income does not allow for him to pay that amount.
Again, that's guessing at what they're doing, without knowing the details, but I expect that's the case; simply owing money is not a jailable offense, unless it is supposedly "owed" to the State.
Joe
Author
Topic: Russell Arrested 4/15/2010 (Read 10715 times)