A History of Hearings

The more I study the history of Nebbia hearings—where prosecutors question the source of a defendant’s bail money—the more I can’t help but think about what happened to me last year in Aurora Municipal Court.

At the end of 2024, I was charged with a municipal ordinance violation—harassment by use of the internet. Not a felony. Not even a misdemeanor. A municipal charge.

I was initially given a personal recognizance bond.

Then that bond was ripped away after I performed a poem at a venue that  Dominique falsely claimed she worked at. The irony? I had secured that paid gig before I ever caught the case. Nevertheless, the court accepted her claim, my PR bond was revoked, and suddenly I was sitting in jail on a $10,000 cash-only bond... for a municipal ordinance violation.

The next day, I paid it.

Cash.

Ten thousand dollars.

And instead of that being the end of it, the DA was reportedly upset that I had actually posted the bond—especially because I had a public defender, as if being poor enough to qualify for counsel somehow meant I should also be too poor to make bail.

My attorney pushed back with a simple truth:

Bail was never meant to punish people for being poor.

But sitting there, Black, in that courtroom, watching the reaction to the fact that I had actually come up with the money… I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was an unspoken expectation:

That I’d sit.

That I’d stay in jail.

That I wouldn’t be able to come up with it.

I can’t say whether  the federal Nebbia rules were originally designed with race in mind.

What I can say is that America has a long history of using poverty as a weapon in the criminal legal system—and when poverty is disproportionately attached to Black communities, “race-neutral” systems can produce very racial outcomes.

Sometimes justice isn’t just about who gets charged.

Sometimes it's about who the system assumes can't fight back.