It is a matter of writ in stone belief in our local jail that every ten days you can get a new bond hearing. Everybody believes it except for us skeptical legal types - not that it does us much good. There's a reality which thumps legal theory no matter how much we point at our laws and rules.
The defendant has had a bond hearing. He was denied bond, it was set at a level difficult to pay, or he just doesn't have anyone willing to put up the money. Everyone at the jail tells him he has a right to another hearing in ten days.
He besieges his defense attorney. He sics Mom and girlfriend on defense attorney to start calling 24 hours a day and eventually the defense attorney is faced with the prospect of never answering the phone again or scheduling another bond hearing. Needing the phone to make a living, she files the putatively futile motion.
A day or two later, everyone is in court and everyone knows how the hearing is going to go. The prosecutor is going to stand up and say the magic words "No significant change in circumstances" and ask the motion be dismissed. The judge will say he doesn't know that until after evidence is presented. The defense attorney will put on exactly the same evidence as was put on in the first hearing except the defendant will now swear he's woken up because of the time he's spent in jail and he'll stay on the straight and narrow from this point forward. The prosecutor and defense attorney then rehash the same arguments made in the prior hearing with a few new (and massively unimportant) flourishes thrown in. Finally, the prosecutor says the magic words again: "No significant change in circumstance."
We all know how this ends, right? The judge looks over his bench and says, "You just had a bond hearing 12 days ago. You don't get a new one just because you don't like the result. Your remedy is to appeal this to the Court of Appeals."
Riiiiiiggghht.
Well, to be honest, it does work that way somewhere between 75-90% of the time. The other 10-25% of the time the defendant's Mom cried more believably this time, or they brought Little Timmy to tell the judge how much he misses his daddy, or the judge over the bond hearing has changed and the new judge has different, more lenient bond standards. Whatever the reason, suddenly defendant has a lower bond - often enough one that has no security attached to it at all.
Defendant has just gotten out of jail because he got his every ten day bond hearing. If he is gone from the jail everybody knows what happened. Heck, he probably got shipped back to the jail to get his stuff and do outprocessing paperwork. People see him getting out and know it was because of his every ten day bond hearing. Nobody remembers that it didn't work for the last eight guys. All they know is that it works (besides, the last eight guys can schedule another every ten day bond hearing and try again).
The myth is spread by the jailhouse lawyers because there is a truth at its core. There is a significant enough success rate that it doesn't matter that it's contrary to law. A defense attorney may tell his client that he's not entitled to a new bond hearing every ten days, but it doesn't matter because the jail residents all know that no matter what the law may say some people have gotten out asserting their every ten day bond hearing right.
And thus, the theoretically legally invalid becomes something more and more attempt because it works for some of them. So, we can say the every ten day bond hearing isn't real and they'll keep on trying it because they know it's worked for some in the past. In a clash of what's on the books versus what's really happening, the reality of the every ten days bond hearing is solid enough that anything we lawyers say goes in one ear and out the other. After all, they know it's worked in the past. Why can't it work for them?
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