One thing we teach students in Constitutional Law is that it's really, really hard to win an equal protection challenge to a statute if the underlying legal standard is rational basis review. Essentially impossible; all the government has to do is to have its lawyers come up with a non-laughable post hoc argument for the way two different groups are treated that might potentially in some universe be true and, boom, the state wins.
So it's noteworthy that the Court of Appeal here -- in the midst of a lengthy opinion on numerous distinct issues -- holds that the statute at issue violates equal protection.
Not that the Court of Appeal is wrong; indeed, it's right (IMHO). The statute says that when you're charged with a crime and can't make bail, one option is for the court (with your permission) to allow you to be placed in home detention -- with GPS monitoring, requirements that you not leave the residence, particularized exceptions, etc. And when you're in that program (stuck in your house) before you've been convicted, if you ultimately get sentenced to prison, you get credit to your sentence for the days you were stuck in your house.
Makes sense.
But Mr. Gerson did make bail ($2 million worth!), and got the same conditions imposed on him as the statute requires for people who can't make bail and are released on home detention -- GPS, can't leave the home except for specified things, etc. He says he should get custody credit too; it makes no sense to treat people who make bail but are then released and confined to their home any different than people who can't make bail but are then released and confined to their home.
And the Court of Appeal agrees with him.
Mind you, for Gerson himself, this only knocks a couple of years off his nearly 34-year sentence.
But still, it's an important decision overall. Plus, even for Gerson, even two more years in prison is a bit deal. Much better to be out. (And, parenthetically, given the facts of the case -- which happened down here in San Diego -- Gerson is super lucky merely to be alive, rather than shot and killed by the police.)
The facts are also a fairly chilling lesson about what can happen when you find yourself way too deep in the whole hallucinogenic scene, my friends.
To repeat the mantra of a show from my youth (albeit in a somewhat different context): "Lets get careful out there."
