On today, August the 13th of the year 2025, a bail hearing has been heard by Magistrate Judge Morgan Luna in regards to Rellik Bedlam and his two HUT charges of Terrorism and First Degree Murder.
I took these facts into consideration when coming to my conclusion about Mr. Bedlam’s potential bail:
Justice Lars had said, before he was injured and put into a coma, that the Judiciary is currently NOT taking any plea deals that request parole. This is because the State’s law enforcement agencies right now are going through a bit of a shake up with their leadership and their available units, which makes it hard for anyone on parole to check in consistently when they need to be doing so. This would also have to extend to having enough law enforcement officials available to enforce Mr. Bedlam’s bail, which would have had the standard conditions in addition to conditions keeping him from Covenant Ave. and other members of “The Blocks.” Given that at the time of this bail hearing, there were only three available LSPD officers on duty, I was not confident that having bail conditions at all would mean anything to Mr. Bedlam if he could just run free doing whatever he wanted.
Using Mr. Bedlam’s house as collateral is not an option, as it cannot be quickly facilitated by the courts. We’d have to transfer the house to the State, and then transfer it back, and we’d have to inventory every single thing within the house before and after to make sure nothing was tampered with while it was out of his ownership. Given that the DOJ now doesn’t have enough available resources to make this happen, even if it was something we did, we’d not be able to accept the house as part of bail.
Mr. Bedlam is being accused of atrocious crimes that have crippled the DOJ, the very backbone of our State. While he is innocent until proven guilty, he has shown a pattern of committing violent crimes before this incident that he had pled guilty to. The State was also concerned that Mr. Bedlam might try to hunt down the witnesses and intimidate or hurt them further. I also shared that same concern.
With all of this said, I could not, in good conscious, grant Mr. Bedlam bail today. This ruling can be appealed by a Judge, as I am a Magistrate Judge, and I fully encourage the defense to do so if they believe this ruling was in any way incorrect.
