On holding the defendant to answer or on a plea of guilty where permitted by law, the magistrate may take from each of the material witnesses examined before him on the part of the people a written undertaking, to the effect that he will appear and testify at the court to which the depositions and statements or case are to be sent, or that he will forfeit the sum of five hundred dollars.
Cal. Penal Code § 878
Examination of the Case, and Discharge of the Defendant, or Holding Him to Answer
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case 191 Cal. App. 2d 253 - People v. Brinson (1961)
Most recently applied in In the Matter of Justin Alexander Marshall Justin Alexander Marshall v. State of Iowa (September 2011)
Amended by Stats. 1935, Ch. 217.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.