Bearden v. Georgia

Bearden v. Georgia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 11, 1983 Decided May 24, 1983
Full case name	Bearden v. Georgia
Citations	461 U.S. 660 (more) 103 S. Ct. 2064; 76 L. Ed. 2d 221; 1983 U.S. LEXIS 39
Case history
Prior	Bearden v. State, 161 Ga. App. 640, 288 S.E.2d 662 (Ct. App. 1982); cert. granted, 458 U.S. 1105 (1982).
Holding
A sentencing court cannot properly revoke a defendant's probation for failure to pay a fine and make restitution, absent evidence and findings that he was somehow responsible for the failure or that alternative forms of punishment were inadequate to meet the State's interest in punishment and deterrence, and hence the trial court erred in automatically revoking petitioner's probation and turning the fine into a prison sentence without making such a determination.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell Jr. · William Rehnquist John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor
Case opinions
Majority	O'Connor, joined by Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
Concurrence	White (in judgment), joined by Burger, Powell, Rehnquist
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), was a landmark^[1][2] U.S. Supreme Court case holding that a local government can only imprison or jail someone for not paying a fine if it can be shown, by means of a hearing, that the person in question could have paid it but "willfully" chose not to do so.^{[3][4][5]: 232}