A federal appellate panel in Atlanta whose members had offered blistering verbal critiques of lawyers defending the city of Calhoun’s practice of jailing people too poor to post misdemeanor bonds never-the-less have handed the city an appellate win.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has vacated a preliminary injunction handed down last year by U.S. District Senior Judge Harold Murphy that had held unconstitutional Calhoun’s practice of jailing indigent defendants accused of city ordinance violations and minor misdemeanors solely because they did not have the money needed to secure their release.
