Murder suspect posts $35M bail
A Chinese real estate scion charged with orchestrating the murder of her children’s father was released from a San Francisco Bay Area jail Thursday after posting $35million bail, a highly unusual financial transaction that startled and angered the victim’s family and friends.
Tiffany Li will remain out of custody after family, friends and business associates of her mother raised $4 million cash and pledged San Francisco Bay Area properties valued a combined $62 million to post her bail. Courts require double the bail amount when property is pledged instead of cash.
“Nothing about this seems right,” said Angela Dunn, a close friend of the victim who shared her home with him in the six months before his death. Dunn said the victim’s mother is taking Li’s release especially hard.
Court records show 15 properties being pledged. Li’s attorney Carr said the properties are owned by family and business associates of Li’s mother, who spends most of her time in China where she profited from real estate investments there.
Li, 31, is charged with directing her boyfriend and another man to kill Keith Green, 27, and dispose of his body, which was found in May with a bullet wound to the neck 129 kilometres north of the suburban San Francisco mansion he and Li once shared with their two young daughters.
Prosecutors say Li feared she would lose custody of her daughters. Li and the two men were arrested shortly after Green’s body was found and the trio is scheduled to stand trial in September. Li has pleaded not guilty.
A bodyguard ushered Li out of jail and into a waiting Cadillac Escalade Thursday afternoon, three hours after a judge ordered her released. The two men charged in the case remain in jail and haven’t asked for bail to be set because they don’t have the financial backing Li has, Li’s attorney Geoff Carr said.
“They have great resources and we are just regular folks,” Dunn said.
The cash bail system in the United States has been under legal and legislative attack in recent years. A number of class action lawsuits have been filed across the country challenging the constitutionality of requiring defendants to post cash bail to go free before trial. Critics of the system argue that cash bail schemes like the one found in California state court unfairly disadvantage poor suspects who can’t afford to post bail while allowing wealthy defendants like Li to go free pending trial.
Authorities in neighbouring San Francisco County say they are examining cash bail requirements there after inmates filed a lawsuit.
Two California legislators have introduced bills seeking to dramatically overhaul the state’s bail requirements, eliminating cash requirements in most cases and taking into account a suspect’s income in cases still requiring money bail.
The California lawmakers and supporters of their bills argue that the current system keeps many innocent people behind bars, disproportionately affects minority defendants and encourages some suspects to plead guilty simply to get out of jail.
Li is charged with directing her boyfriend Kaveh Bayat and Olivier Adella to kill and dispose of Green’s body last year. Li and Green had an acrimonious split in October 2015 after Green discovered Li’s relationship with Bayat, Dunn said.