The wildly popular podcast, Serial, has come to Cleveland to take a deeper look at a typical criminal justice system. Throughout the series, The Buckeye Institute will look at the issues raised and what Ohio can do to fix some of those issues.

In the first episode, we learn of a 21-year-old woman (renamed “Anna”) who was sexually assaulted in a Cleveland bar by two men who repeatedly slapped her on the butt. She was charged with felonious assault of a police officer after she accidentally struck an officer who was breaking up a fight between Anna and women who were friends with the two men.

Although Anna had no intent to strike the officer, she was charged, and spent four nights in jail in what she described as “disgusting” conditions and was assigned $5,000 bail, while the two men who sexually assaulted her received no legal repercussions.

Historically, in order to be convicted of a crime, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had criminal intent, known as mens rea. And in 2014, The Buckeye Institute pushed for reforms to ensure morally blameless people aren’t swept into the criminal justice system. In Anna’s case, even though she did not have criminal intent to hit the officer, she was still charged with a crime.

Anna’s story highlights that even when the law is right, criminal intent requirements are not always enforced in practice. In order for otherwise law-abiding citizens to be kept from being dragged into the criminal justice system, practitioners need to be committed to traditional principles of mens rea.

Anna’s story also illustrates the injustice of Ohio’s cash bail system—an injustice that Buckeye detailed in “Money Bail”: Making Ohio a More Dangerous Place to Live. In Ohio’s system, people are detained while awaiting trial, not based on their risk to public safety, but on whether they have the money for bail. If a person cannot afford bail, they can remain in jail for days, weeks, and even months awaiting trial—even if that person is charged with a low-level offense and has no history violence. If a person has the funds to make bail, they are released until trial, regardless of their potential danger to the public.

To reform Ohio’s broken cash bail system, courts across the state should use proven risk-assessment tools that provide a fairer, more efficient way to keep Ohio’s communities safe and secure; and the since the government is attempting to take away a person’s liberty, the burden should be on the government to demonstrate that restricting the person’s liberty is necessary to reasonably ensure appearance in court or public safety.

Hannah Fjeldsted is a visiting fellow with The Buckeye Institute’s Legal Center.