CNN
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In late August of 2021, Minneapolis police responded to a shooting along I-94, where they found a BMW sedan that had crashed into a freeway median. Slumped behind the steering wheel was 38-year-old Luis Damian Martinez Ortiz, who’d suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.
After reviewing surveillance footage, police arrested George Howard, then 47, who’d gotten into an alleged road-rage altercation with Ortiz on a freeway onramp, according to court documents. Howard, whose trial is slated for April, stands accused of second-degree murder; his attorney says he was acting in self-defense.
Days after his arrest, local crime bloggers and rightwing media pounced on a discovery. Three weeks prior to the shooting, Howard – who had a lengthy rap sheet and a history of violence – had been bailed out of jail while awaiting trial on a misdemeanor domestic-assault charge.
The woman he allegedly assaulted had secretly called 911 during that incident and was heard by a dispatcher saying, “I don’t want to die,” according to a case report obtained by CNN.
The party that put up the $1,500 in cash to release Howard is a progressive organization called the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
“Ya picked another winner, MFF, bravo,” tweeted CrimeWatchMpls, a widely followed local crime blog – and a frequent critic of the nonprofit – above the court document it had dug up and mugshot of Howard. “Thanks so much.”
The Minnesota Freedom Fund is among more than 100 charitable bail groups in the United States. Together, they represent a segment of the bail ecosystem that mostly flew under the public’s radar until the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Most raise money through crowdsourcing or other methods of fundraising and post bail for low-income defendants as part of a larger effort to abolish the cash-bail system, which many of the nonprofits view as a predator of the poor – and in particular of Black, brown and Indigenous communities.
Floyd’s death left many Americans eager to do their part to counter inequities in the criminal justice system. Celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Seth Rogen and Vice President Kamala Harris touted the Minnesota Freedom Fund and other bail charities on Twitter. Donations poured…
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