Within 24 hours after a person is arrested, judges across Utah must make a decision: Should the suspect be required to pay money — and how much — to get out of jail until trial?
It’s not a decision that is taken lightly, says Judge Todd Shaughnessy, but it does have one major problem.
“As things stand right now, we have to make that decision with basically no information,” the 3rd District judge said in a recent interview.
Defendants can either pay the full bail amount set by a judge in cash, or they can pay a smaller bond to a bail bondsman, who then pays the bail amount to the court.