Commonwealth v. Carman
Annotate this CaseDefendants were arrested and charged with drug-related and firearm-related offenses and booked into the county jail. A district judge ordered that the men were not to be released without the posting of a bail bond, and arraignments were scheduled for the next day. The next morning, however, a different district judge ordered that Defendants be released on their own recognizance and postponed their arraignments for four days. The Commonwealth moved to have second judge’s order set aside and the original bond order for Defendants reinstated, asserting that recorded jail telephone conversations indicated that someone “pulled strings” to bring about Defendants’ release and that the release of the two men was improper. The judge to whom the case was assigned denied the Commonwealth’s motion to reinstate the cash bonds set in the original order. The Supreme Court denied the Commonwealth’s request to certify the law but employed its discretionary authority to issue a general writ of prohibition to “exercise control of the Court of Justice,” holding that judges are prohibited from engaging in ex parte communications to change the conditions of a defendant’s release after the initial fixing of bail.
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