Subject: Re: Sir Dope1
Yes - because you can't just be "held for trial." Because that's being "imprisoned without conviction." If you haven't been convicted of a crime, you can't have a punishment imposed (being locked in a jail) before the trial.

Judges can hold people for custody (or not) for a variety of reasons - whether or not the suspect is

*A flight risk
*A repeat offender
*Charged with an especially heinous crime
etc.

There are exceptions. If prosecutors can demonstrate that you're a flight risk, they can take measures that will ensure that you will show up when required. Only in certain, very specific instances will those measures include pretrial detention - usually you can avoid pre-trial detention by posting bail, and you have a constitutional right that such bail not be "excessive."

And this is where the no-cash bail laws that blue states and cities are enacting come into play. Suspects don't even need to bother to post bail; as long as there is a bail set, they're out.

Local jurisdictions, as you saw in my previous post, often also don't even charge up to the maximum level they could.