California civil liberties groups applauded a state Supreme Court decision that eliminates hundreds of dollars in fines for an alleged member of the Mexican Mafia, a move that advocates say strengthens protections for indigent defendants in other cases.
“This decision is a significant step toward a justice system that does not punish people for poverty,” said Kathryn Eidmann of Public Counsel, whose historic victory in 2019 set the stage for Monday's decision.
The ruling softens recent judicial efforts to protect California convicts from what Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu called “cascading consequences” of administrative debt.
“While a defendant's poverty does not make him less subject to punishment for violating the law, our justice system should not punish a defendant more severely simply because he is poor,” Liu wrote in his agreement.
The case is one of many that arose in the wake of People v. Dueñas, a 2019 ruling by the state's appellate division that found that imposing mandatory fines on indigent people conflicted with the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive fines along with cruel and unusual punishment.
Velia Dueñas was a homeless mother with cerebral palsy and two young children who ended up behind bars and drowning in debt because she continued driving after her license was suspended for three unpaid citations she racked up as a teenager.
Jason Hernandez, whose victory Monday strengthens those protections, is described in court documents as a boss of the Varrio Fallbrook Locos gang and a “shot caller” for the Mexican Mafia. Hernandez was convicted of brutalizing a woman he said owed him money (stabbing her in the head and neck and breaking several bones in her face) and then plotting to kill a man who witnessed the beating.
In 2019, he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 restitution fine to the state's victim compensation fund, money he told the court he did not have.
California officials argued that being bankrupt was not enough to justify cutting Hernandez's bill.
“He committed a brutal assault during which he personally inflicted great bodily injury,” the state argued in a 2020 brief. “To evade responsibility for that assault, he conspired to kill a witness and attempted to dissuade another witness from testifying against him. He committed all of these crimes to benefit a criminal gang and had a long history of prior felonies.”
Hernandez was also assessed a series of fines and administrative fees, including laboratory testing, a drug program, booking fees for his arrest, operations assessments and facility fees for the court where his case was heard.
The high court's decision vacated hundreds of dollars in administrative fees Hernandez faced and sent the $10,000 restitution fine to the lower court for reconsideration.
These rates have come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Their advocates say they help defray the costs of delivering justice. Critics say they bury convicts in debt and put them back behind bars simply for being poor.
Following the Dueñas decision, California lawmakers passed a bill that would have required courts to determine whether defendants could pay before imposing many remaining fines, effectively codifying the ruling as state law.
Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in 2019.
“We must address the burdensome fines, fees, and assessments that disproportionately drive low-income people deeper into debt and further away from full participation in their communities,” Newsom wrote at the time. “However, I do not believe that requiring a hearing on defendants' ability to pay is the best approach in all cases.”
In response, the legislature voted to eliminate some of the state's most controversial fees and effectively repeal others. What emerged in the years that followed is a patchwork of conflicting appeals court decisions, which the Supreme Court attempted to resolve on Monday.
“While today's ruling adopts a narrower constitutional framework than Dueñas, it affirms a fundamental principle that our work helped advance: courts must consider a person's inability to pay before imposing certain judicial assessments,” Eidmann said.
The decision doesn't go as far as the bill Newsom vetoed, but it does give poor convicts more freedom to avoid or challenge court-imposed fees and fines.
“While our resolution resolves the orders in this particular case, we urge the Legislature to review the issues surrounding court-ordered ancillary payments in criminal cases and address them in a more comprehensive manner,” Associate Judge Carol A. Corrigan wrote.
