Sacramento man says 'perfect storm' of legislation led to his sister's murder
Dan Tibbitts says California's Prop 57, Prop 47, and zero-dollar bail all had a hand in his sister Mary Kate's killing.
A study out of a California county found that zero-dollar bail resulted in hundreds of criminals back on the streets committing more crimes, and one Sacramento resident who lost his sister in a brutal murder in 2021 said he wasn't surprised by the findings.
The study, from the district attorney in California’s Yolo County, showed that 70% of defendants released for free between 2020 and 2021 reoffended and were twice as likely to commit a new crime, compared to those who had to post bail. In addition, suspects were three times as likely to be rearrested for committing a violent crime under zero-bail versus being required to post bond.
"I mean, frankly it shocks the conscience to think that many new crimes were committed by the people released on $0 bail, and all of the new victims," Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig told "America Reports" in August. "That’s what I thought about, the new victims who have been created as a result of this policy."
Dan Tibbitts' sister Mary Kate was murdered in her Sacramento home in 2021. He said she was the victim of a "perfect storm" of dangerous legislation: California's Prop 57, Prop 47, and zero-dollar bail. Prop 57, passed by voters in 2016, allowed for early release for nonviolent felons. Proposition 47 was a voter-approved initiative on the November 2014 ballot that reduced from felonies to misdemeanors specified low-level drug and property crimes. Sacramento police arrested 57-year-old Troy Davis on suspicion of murder. He was a parolee with a violent history, who was also charged with assault, intent to commit rape and arson for allegedly setting Mary Kate’s home on fire.
"My sister is, I’m sad to say, a statistic of all this bad legislation and policy and political agendas," Tibbitts told Fox News Digital.
Dan Tibbitts says California's Prop 57, Prop 47, and zero-dollar bail all had a hand in his sister Mary Kate's killing. (Fox News Digital)
Davis, Tibbitts said, had been released "well short" of his sentence for a previous crime as a result of Proposition 57. He committed more crimes when he was released under Prop 57 in 2018, the last of which was auto theft, a crime which was decriminalized under Prop 47. Finally, he was released under zero bail, with what Tibbitts called a "pinky swear" that he would return for his arraignment.
The California Judicial Council in April 2020 implemented the statewide Emergency Bail Schedule, or "zero bail" policy, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers rescinded its $0 bail order in June 2020, but some counties kept the policy in place.
"I was not surprised at all," Joe Gamaldi, the National Vice President of the Fraternal Order of Police, told Fox News Digital of the Yolo County findings. "We knew that bail reform was going to be an unmitigated disaster. And this study, along with others, just proves what we knew all along."
"So I think when you take bail reform, and activist DAs, and rogue prosecutors, these judges that are just completely not doing their job, combined the fact that we’ve treated law enforcement like crap for the better part of a decade in this country, and it’s not hard to figure out why we’re seeing just a massive crime wave in America," Gamaldi said.
Joe Gamaldi says he's not surprised by a study out of Yolo County, California, that found 70 percent of defendants released for free between 2020 and 2021 reoffended and were twice as likely to commit a new crime. (Fox News Digital)
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The Bail Project, however, took issue with the Yolo County study, arguing it contained "many sampling and methodological errors" that obscured the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on crime. The national nonprofit provides free bail assistance and pretrial support to thousands of low-income people each year to demonstrate that a more humane, equitable, and effective pretrial system is possible, the group explains.
"The emergency order that resulted from the so-called ‘zero-dollar’ bail policy across the state of California was initiated in response to an unprecedented global pandemic that killed over one million Americans," Tara Watford, Chief Data Officer at The Bail Project, told Fox News Digital. "The conditions for these COVID-19 ‘zero-dollar bail’ releases were without historical precedent.
"The form of administrative release that the Yolo study examines – where people were released automatically, without any individualized assessment, and without any mechanisms to ensure that they are connected to valuable and critical supportive services that can keep them safe and free from harm during the pretrial period – does not resemble the type of successful bail reform measures that we have seen instituted across the country without impact on public safety," Watford added.
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"We know that reducing the use of financial release conditions, when part of holistic pretrial improvements, does not lead to increased crime," Watford continued. "The Bail Project has secured the release of nearly 30,000 people nationally by paying their bail and connecting them to voluntary social services like court reminders, transportation to and from court, housing assistance, and treatments for addiction and mental illness. Those clients return to court more than 90% of the time. Our work proves that the pretrial system can properly function, and the public can remain safe without the use of cash bail."
Barbed wire and a guard tower is seen at San Quentin State Prison on April 12, 2022, in San Quentin, CA. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
Reisig's office countered by pointing to data from the Public Policy Institute of California that showed crime decreased during the COVID-19 period in California.
"To be clear, the Yolo Zero Bail Study simply examined the re-offense rates of a random sample of arrestees released from custody on Zero Bail during the COVID period compared to a random sample of arrestees, of similar demographics and crime types, who were released from custody on traditional bail during a prior period. Because crime was actually LOWER during the COVID period, the Yolo Study of recidivism probably underestimates the recidivism rates of those released on Zero Bail during other periods," the DA said.
Gamaldi acknowledged a conversation does "need to be had" about bail, noting how "ridiculous" the cost used to be for say a mother charged $5,000 for stealing a loaf of bread.
"But what we should have done," he said, "is to take a scalpel to our bail industry and made sure that we fixed some of the issues. But instead they took a sledgehammer to it."
He argued for getting back to basics.
"We need to embrace broken windows theory," he said. "We need to vehemently prosecute violent crime, which includes giving them high bond amounts when they're a significant risk to the community. We need to make sure that we're funding and supporting our law enforcement in our communities to make sure we have officers out there doing their job. And we need to make sure the criminal justice system understands just what's going on, on our streets right now. We cannot continue with this revolving door criminal justice system."
"We need to not be afraid to incarcerate dangerous individuals," he added. "This is not rocket science."
Bail reform has stoked controversy in other parts of the country. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, D., recently proposed a partial rollback of the state’s bail reform laws. In 2019, lawmakers ended cash bail requirements for many criminal charges as a way of addressing inequities in the criminal justice system. But a rise in crime coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some to scrutinize those changes.
Hochul has proposed giving judges more discretion to assign bail in violent felony and high-level misdemeanor cases. Her plan would remove a clause that requires judges to impose the "least restrictive" release conditions to ensure a defendant will make their court appearances, which she says has been interpreted differently by judges across the state.
"All I'm trying to do right now is remedy that inconsistency that exists in law," Hochul said of her proposal. "And by focusing on the serious offenses, I believe that we should be able to garner the support."
Tibbitts, who said his sister's death will "haunt" him forever, said that his advocacy today consists of speaking out against policies he considers dangerous.
"It’s speaking out saying, ‘Hey, we’re the faces of the families of the victims who are paying for this ludicrous policy,’" he told Fox Digital. "There are dire repercussions from doing this stuff."
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"My advocacy is to say, Okay, all this sounds great when you polish it up – Prop 57, 47, and zero bail," he continued. "But guess what? It really is far darker than what they say. There are repercussions. That’s life. The lives of innocent people who are victimized because of letting these bad people out of prison or jail."
"The death of my sister will haunt me for the rest of my days," Tibbitts said. "But why I’m speaking out is not to honor my sister – maybe it does, but that’s not what I’m out for – what I’m out for is, if I can help one person, from having to suffer the fate my sister suffered, it’s all worth it. It’s about preventing more senseless murders like my sister."
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