Bond firms sue over bail reform

A Harris County judge has sided with lawyers for the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office and a slate of new Democratic magistrates vying to loosen misdemeanor bail rules this weekend, rather than grant a request of three bail bond companies that would have delayed the start of the proposed revisions.

The companies argued Thursday that the court-ordered bail reform — believed to be a key step in a lengthy legal fight over the pretrial detention of poor, low-level offenders — would jeopardize their Houston bail bonds business.

“They won’t get to write as many bail bonds as they did before and they won’t make as much money as they did before,” said Allan Van Fleet, a lawyer representing the judges.

The bail reform is intended to relieve financial disparity among offenders. It would automatically qualify 85 percent of people arrested on misdemeanors for release on no-cash bonds, county officials have estimated. Those arrested for bail violations, repeat drunken driving and family violence would be the only exceptions.

“You got money, you can get out of jail. If you don’t, you stay there,” Van Fleet explained of the current system. “All kinds of bad things happen — you lose your job, you lose you car, you plead out to things you didn’t do just to get out of jail.”

The reform, however, would

still require defendants to appear before a magistrate or judge within 48 hours, at which time they also could qualify for no-cash bonds.

The reform, the companies argue, violates state law because it would guarantee many defendants a specific type of bail without first providing them individual hearings before a magistrate, and because it would require the sheriff to reject some bonds that otherwise would be valid under state law, among other reasons.

“We have a constitutional right to make our living by bail bonds and if they want to amend the way the things are, they can do that but it still has to be by state law,” said Kevin Pennell, who represented Set ’Em Free Bail Bonds, A Better Bail Bond and Advantage Bail Bonds in the county suit filed Thursday.

Judge Larry Weiman of the 80th Civil District Court countered the argument before he denied the order.

“Doesn’t the court have to balance the constitutional right of the defendants, those who are arrested and charged with a crime?” Weiman asked, before resetting the temporary injunction hearing to March 11.

The judges elected in November announced the revised bail rules shortly after taking office last month, and Chief U.S. District Court Judge Lee H. Rosenthal signaled she would support the proposal at a Feb. 1 hearing in the longrunning bail reform lawsuit that now is expected to be settled.

The landmark litigation began in 2016, when attorneys and civil rights groups sued the county on behalf of defendants jailed for days because they could not afford bail on low-level offenses.

In 2017, Rosenthal issued a preliminary injunction upending the county’s bail system, which relied on a set schedule that dictated amounts based on the crime and not on a consideration of a defendant’s ability to pay. Finding that practice unconstitutional, the judge ordered the county to start releasing low-level defendants on no-cash bonds within 24 hours of their arrest.

The county appealed that ruling, and the U.S. 5th Circuit asked Rosenthal to retool the order, so she gave officials 48 hours to release inmates instead of 24. The misdemeanor judges again appealed, but those Republican officeholders were swept out in November and replaced with Democrats, who withdrew the appeal and announced the proposed bail rules.

Van Fleet warned the judges would have faced contempt of federal court for failing to implement the changes had the judge ruled in favor of the bonds companies. Additionally, the lawyer said the order would have continued to weigh financially on Harris County and those jailed and forced to miss work in order to “scrounge money to make that bond.”

The reform would dramatically reduce the daily in-custody cost, he said.

The preliminary results of the proposed rules are slated to be reviewed on March 8 before Rosenthal.