Appeal asks whether ‘on release’ includes defendants detained pending trial

Attorney Patrick Levin argued before the court that a defendant who is detained “for want of bail” and awaiting trial is not “on release” for purposes of the Commonwealth’s bail-revocation statute. “Someone who's incarcerated is not on release,” Levin told the justices, urging reversal of a single justice’s decision and asking the court to vacate the bail-revocation entry from Dante Lewis’s record.

The issue, Levin said, turns on the plain language of the statute and customary usage: admission to bail, Levin argued, occurs when a defendant is actually released into the custody of a surety, not merely when a judge sets bail or provides the oral warning. He cited habeas-related language in the statutes to say that “he's not bailed until he posts the bail, and he's released.” Levin also noted that the bail revocation order at issue expired a year earlier and described the case as effectively moot for this defendant, while asking…