Justices to vote on bond change

A spokeswoman for Maricopa County Superior Court said there is no evidence that failures to appear have risen since the rule change. And a spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said it’s too early to tell if the rule changes have increased the number of active warrants.

Ariz. courts leading the charge

That replacement is a key component of reform that’s still missing from Arizona’s equation. Short of setting a high bond amount, Waters said courts must be permitted a mechanism to keep dangerous or flight-prone individuals in jail before their trial.

This is where the next court rule change comes into play. In the next few months, Arizona’s Supreme Court justices will vote on whether to allow judges to set hearings that will deem a defendant non-bondable. Currently, only prosecutors can request this hearing, and prosecutors often aren’t present at the initial court appearance.

Inevitably, this would mean that more defendants are deemed ineligible for release no matter what the conditions.

Before, these were the cases in which bond was set in six- or seven-digit amounts to keep defendants in lockup.

Reform advocates contend that relying only on a high bail amount can put the community at risk. Suspects with, say, family money or connections to the illegal drug trade easily could pay their way to freedom before a trial.

The rule change also would allow courts to deny bail to those with a history of failures to appear.

It’s for this reason that Arizona’s bailreform efforts have run into unlikely opposition from progressive groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Traditionally a champion of criminaljustice reform, the ACLU’s local attorneys say the change would be counterproductive for some defendants, actually keeping them in jail longer.

ACLU Policy Director Will Gaona said the issue lies in who the courts deem “high risk.” Many low-level offenders will be tagged high-risk because they repeatedly failed to show for court, not because they are a danger to the community, he said.

Gaona said there will inevitably be overlap here with people who can’t pay bail, particularly in homeless and mentally ill populations.

“These are already the people languishing in jail because they can’t afford the $500 to pay for their bail,” he said.

In an official comment to the courts, ACLU attorneys called the proposals “both premature and backwards-facing.” They said the changes were premature given that the Arizona Legislature may address the issue at a later date. And they were backward-facing, the attorneys said, in light of a recent Arizona Supreme Court ruling that expanded the rights of some individuals facing pretrial detention.

“The proposed rule changes rely in part on the notion that being charged with certain serious crimes serves as a convincing proxy for unmanageable dangerousness,” the comment said. “Yet, in Simpson, the Court held that a specific, serious charge — sexual conduct with a minor — is not always inherently predictive of future dangerousness.”

Waters said the court’s “frequent flyers” — the ones who are poor, are often arrested and miss court dates — are the hardest part of the equation. But she said the intent of the court’s rule change was more intended to target individuals who pose an actual flight risk.

Waters said in the future, the state may require statutory or constitutional changes to fully embrace bail reform.

“I think it just depends on the improvements and what can be done (in the courts),” she said. “I think only time will tell that.”