Now with aggravation!
I was reading the ever-uber Overcompensating! this morning and followed Mr. Rowland down the rabbit hole to the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento Penal Code Presumptive Bail listings. Here, I find many things, such as the fact that if you throw a rock at a bus window and konk someone on the noggin, you need to pay fifty grand to get out of jail.

I am confused, however, as to what aggravation means in a legal sense. For example, the crime of "mayhem", whatever that is, has bail at $30,000. If the mayhem is done whilst aggravated, however, (or perhaps with aggravation) the bail shoots up an order of magnitude to ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (MUAHAHAHA!) The same thing applies to arson: regular arson is between 10 and 30 grand, depending on what you burn, but just add aggravation, and again, ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

Those seem to be the only instances of doing anything aggravated though, so my conjecture kind of grinds to a halt there. According to Google, "aggravated = made more severe or intense". Does that just mean that if you do something with aggravation, you're just trying really, really hard? Or is it more like doing the same thing, but worse? In that case, I can't really understand why there would be a jump of $70,000 in bail monies. (Or am I under-estimating things? Maybe there should be three or four reallys before the hard?)

(Updated! OC is asking the same sort of questions!)  ¶ 7:03 p.m.