OSI-Baltimore fellow Zina Makar’s bail reform efforts makes headlines

OSI-Baltimore community fellow Zina Makar has been working with the Baltimore City Public Defender’s office to represent poor defendants by employing the power of habeas corpus—a legal procedure that keeps governments from holding people indefinitely without showing cause–and advocate for bail reform generally. Her work was mentioned in two City Paper stories. One piece, by the paper’s new editor Karen Houppert, was about Makar’s work representing Dominick Torrence, who was swept up in the rioting and protests after Freddie Gray’s death (wrongfully, he claims) and held on $250,000 bail, despite having never been convicted of a violent offense. The other piece, an op-ed by Public Defender Paul Oppenheim, also talks about Makar’s work with Torrence. And yesterday, the Afro published a profile of Makar, in which she describes her work: “The state is keeping [people] in jail because [they] are poor,” she says. “We’re here to make sure their liberty is not infringed upon and they be given the least restrictive conditions to pretrial release.”