A Lancaster County, Pa., judge is expected to revisit the whopping $1 million bail set for each of several accused rioters after some of them hired private attorneys and filed petitions protesting the amount, according to a report on Wednesday.
Magisterial District Judge Bruce Roth said he would hold bail hearings on Thursday now that each of the nine defendants have secured counsel, Lancaster Online reported.
“I want all the defendants to be treated equally, so I tried to procure attorneys for all of them, so they could all have bail hearings at the same time,” Roth said.
The cases are being revisited in response to bail petitions filed by some of the defendants who hired private attorneys, Roth told the website in an email.
The judge had set bail at $1 million for at least nine of the 13 people arrested early Monday during protests over the police shooting of Ricardo Munoz. They are charged with a slew of felonies and misdemeanors including arson, riot, vandalism and criminal conspiracy.
The father of Kathryn Patterson — one of the accused rioters and a Kappa Delta sorority sister — blasted the amount his daughter was being held in jail on as “vindictive” in an interview with The Post on Wednesday.
“[I’m] completely floored. It’s really just vindictive,” Chip Patterson said. “You want to have faith in the system because it’s the only one we have and then you experience this. I understand why my daughter would protest in the first place.”
Social justice advocacy groups also decried the bail amount as excessive. Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman went as far as to call it “unconstitutional.”
