$1M Bond for $25 Theft Lowered After Prosecutor Calls Amount 'Silly'
The jail in Hamilton County, Ohio, is already overcrowded. But that didn’t stop a local municipal court judge from setting a $1 million bond for Gary Weaver. So what is Weaver accused of doing?
The charge is that he stole about $25 by paying for items with what looked like rolls of dimes but were instead pennies anchored by dimes in the rolls. And that was 18 years ago, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
According to the Enquirer, the 1990 charges came to light when police arrested Weaver, despondent over the recent deaths of his mother and brother, with cutting himself at a motel. He was charged with disorderly conduct.
Weaver pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to the day in jail he’d already spent. In the process, court officials uncovered the 18-year-old case, which at the time was a felony. The bond the judge set back then was $1 million because Weaver apparently had a previous conviction.
Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Richard Bernat reinstated the old bond and declined to reduce it last week.
But after county prosecutor Joe Deters called the bond amount ‘silly,’ a new judge agreed to reduce the bond Monday.
Weaver was to be released by noon on his own recognizance, the Enquirer reports in a follow-up story.
Updated at 3:32 p.m. to state that Hamilton County is in Ohio.
