Fiona Apple Wrote a Song About This Maryland Court-Watching Effort

Singer-songwriter Fiona Apple’s first new music in five years is a song called “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home),” and the lyrics are based on the experiences of women she encountered while working with an activist group that observes bond hearings for people who have been accused of crimes. Apple lives in California, but the group, Life After Release, operates in Prince George’s County; she got connected to it through another activist organization she was working with. Since then, Apple has become intensely engaged with Life After Release and its court-watching program, CourtWatch PG.

As a court monitor, Apple watched thousands of hearings remotely via video feed. The singer has explained that she was struck by how often women, many of them mothers with children at home, were sent to jail simply because they couldn’t afford to put up money for bail. (That’s why DC, unlike Prince George’s, has mostly eliminated cash bail.)

Life After Release is run by Qiana Johnson, who founded the program shortly after she was released from incarceration in Prince George’s County in 2017. (She’d been convicted of participating in a real-estate scheme.) Johnson’s broader goal for the court-watching initiative is to document racial inequity in the local justice system. “People outside of Maryland think Maryland is so progressive,” she says. “We’re still incarcerating hella Black people in this state.”

CourtWatch PG now has about 40 volunteers: lawyers, academics, students, and others with an interest in pushing for more fairness in the routine workings of the judicial system. Most court proceedings are required to be open to the public, but as CourtWatch PG points out, what good does that do if nobody is actually watching? Its mission is to be those observers. Volunteers document what happens at the bond hearings and sometimes send letters to officials when they see things that seem unfair. Life After Release also does fundraising to help people who can’t afford bail get released while awaiting trial.

About a year ago, Johnson received a request from Apple: Would it be okay for her to write music inspired by her time working with CourtWatch PG? Johnson agreed, and several months later, Apple played her the song that resulted. The lyrics tell the story of a fictional single mother who is arrested and can’t afford bail; her young children and elderly mother suffer without her care. Apple “wanted part of her legacy to be combined with us,” Johnson says. “That is so heartwarming—to see that Fiona Apple wanted to memorialize her work, and what she saw, in her song. This is an example of how you use more than just your money to be involved.” An accompanying music video features formerly incarcerated women the singer met through her work.

Apple will donate proceeds from the track to Free Black Mamas DMV, a coalition of DC-area organizations—including Life After Release—that works to bail mothers and caregivers out of jail, as well as assist with transitional housing, transportation, and other essentials. Johnson says the money from the song will help fund the things they’re already doing. But more important is the attention it has generated for the group, and for the broader cause of bail reform and addressing structural racism in the judicial system. “You’re innocent until proven guilty—that’s the dream that they sell us,” says Johnson. “And that is not what’s happening.”

This article appears in the July 2025 issue of Washingtonian.

Kate Corliss

Junior Staff Writer