GOP bail reform measure advances
Both chambers of the Texas Legislature on Saturday advanced a new version of Republicans’ priority bail reform bill, despite objections from Democratic lawmakers who opposed the measure’s constraints on the use of cashless personal bonds.
Republicans who support the bail bill, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, argue that state law does not go far enough in keeping defendants accused of violent or sexual crimes behind bars as they await trial. Democratic lawmakers oppose the proposal, saying it would disproportionately incarcerate Blacks and Latinos and lead to further overcrowding in jails.
After a House committee hearing Saturday that lasted roughly nine hours, lawmakers on a party-line vote sent House Bill 2 to the full chamber. The Senate Jurisprudence Committee held an overlapping and much shorter hearing on Senate Bill 6, the upper chamber’s identical version of the bail reform package authored by state Sen. Joan Huffman, RHouston. The committee advanced the bill on a 3-0 vote.
Some of the bill’s main sticking points are a provision that bars charitable organizations from posting
bond for defendants accused or previously convicted of a violent crime; an expanded list of offenses for which defendants may not be released on cashless personal bonds; and a statewide risk assessment tool that Democrats said would unfairly punish minority defendants by allowing judges to consider their criminal histories, among other factors, when setting bail.
During the House committee hearing, state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, said Texas’ criminal justice system
has a “disparate racial impact, mostly for Black men,” raising issues with the risk assessment’s use of a defendant’s criminal background.
“It is my concern that this, added onto a system that already treats those folks in a different way, is going to give another opportunity for bias to play a role and to exacerbate the systemic racism that exists in our criminal justice system,” Moody said. “And what frustrates me the most is we have done an immense amount of work in this body to try and turn the corner on those things. … This is going to take us backwards.”
State Rep. Reggie Smith, a Sherman Republican who authored the bill, said the so-called public safety reports, which judges may use to determine the risk of releasing a defendant, would provide wider discretion for setting bail by allowing judges to consider a range of factors beyond the defendant’s ability to pay. Smith also said the bill is intended to address situations like in Harris County, where he said an “egregious number” of homicides are being committed by “offenders out on some type of insufficient bond.”
A Houston Chronicle investigation published Friday found that in 2020, more than 18,000 Harris County defendants were charged with new felonies and misdemeanors while out on bond, three times as many as in 2015.
“We have to protect the public. We balance the need to do that against our American constitutional rights and the presumption of innocence, the right to a jury trial, et cetera,” Smith said. “And we’re striking that balance. I think what this bill is designed to do is both try and protect the community, and also to do our best to make individualized assessments to comport with federal law and do the least restrictive set of conditions on bail so that we’re able to get folks … out of jail if they need to be.”
The bail legislation is a priority of Abbott, who cited it as a key reason for calling lawmakers back to Austin for the 30-day special session.
‘Protecting a business’
Democrats particularly assailed the bill’s proposed limits on charities that seek to bail defendants out of jail. Groups that have paid bail for three or fewer defendants within the last six months would be exempt from the rule, as would religious groups and family members of the defendant.
That measure comes after charitable organizations frequently bailed out protesters who were arrested during demonstrations over police brutality following the murder of George Floyd last year.
State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, said that feature seemed designed to cater to the bail bond industry.
“You don’t want to really cut into the bail bond business, so you’re going to make sure that those cash bonds, those big fat cash bonds, are going to have to be made by bail bond people,” said Thompson, who serves as vice chair of the committee. “It looks like we’re protecting a business.”
State Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, questioned Smith’s decision to include a provision that denies nocost personal bonds to defendants who commit assault — a Class A misdemeanor that would include someone charged in a bar fight, she noted — while out on bond or community supervision for a violent offense.
Room for amendment
Johnson, a former chief human trafficking prosecutor for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, also pressed Smith on a measure to deny no-cost personal bonds to those accused of aggravated promotion of prostitution. She had worked with a previous author to remove that from the bill during the regular session.
“For decades, we have prosecuted women who were victims as offenders, because they can technically be charged with prostitution,” Johnson said. “Aggravated promotion of prostitution probably has a significantly higher rate of trapping women … as opposed to their exploiters and perpetrators who are making a profit off their sexual exploitation.”
In response, Smith noted that the list of crimes applies only to personal bonds, meaning defendants could still post bail using surety bonds financed by a bail bondsman. He also said he was open to amending the bill.
“Well, to be completely candid with you, I did not develop this list,” Smith said. “I know I’m responsible for the bill. But, what I will tell you is, if you want to have some conversations about this list, I would be glad to have them.”