I'll confess I haven't looked into that, but the judges in the city routinely balk at high bail.

For some background, the DA does support no cash bail but we do not have it currently implemented in this city. That system isn't what a lot of people think it is, basically everyone is either a danger to society/flight risk or they're not. In a no cash bail system you let the people who should be free on bail out and keep the ones who are dangerous in. Right now a mass murderer could get out on bail if they had enough money, while some guy who got arrested for having too many unpaid parking tickets can't.

Like I said, we don't have it in this city. What the DA often does is try to set the maximum legal amount they can if they don't believe someone should be allowed to go free. That's what happened here. The judges routinely deny those requests and set it to something that can be paid, it happens all the time. Last year there was a guy out on bail who killed that Temple kid? Krasner took a lot of heat for that but it was the same exact situation, they tried to set bail at 1 mil and the judge reduced it twice.

u/GreenAnder 's comment is a good explanation of the machinations behind that outcome. But on a practical level, the judge set it at 170k because people in PA have a right to bail except for in the case of capital crimes (his convictions were not) and/or they pose an immediate threat to public safety. The latter seems clear with 20/20 hindsight, but at the time he was convicted we didn't have Precogs proving that he was going to go out and shoot up a school. Million dollar bail can be argued as denial of bail (because it's meant to be) and a violation of civil rights.

This judge attempted to balance the constitutional right to bail with risk to public safety and the judge judged wrongly here.