DA’s office identifies 60 inmates who may be eligible for lower bail

With the jail population near its breaking point, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s staff has identified 60 inmates who may be considered for bail reductions.

Ogg’s office announced the assessment in a court document Thursday filed in response to a federal judge’s request. Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal asked the DA last week to review more than 1,500 people detained at the jail because they cannot come up with $1,000 or less to cover bail of $10,000 and below.

Rosenthal suggested last week in a case involving a felony bail challenge that the DA and district judges make reductions where possible to ease some of the crowding amid the surging pandemic to avoid a “killing field” at the jail.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit say costly bail rates unjustly keep thousands of poor people locked up before trial simply because they can’t afford bail. Rosenthal, who can’t tell state judges what to do with their dockets, asked the DA and judges to contemplate what they can do to lessen the strain.

More than 95 percent of the beds at the lockup are occupied, and the population is not abating, said Jason Spencer, spokesman for Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. In the meantime, adjudications are significantly slowed by court closures since Hurricane Harvey, and the backlog has been compounded by the risk of exposure to COVID-19 since last spring.

Felony judges had a 51 percent clearance rate in December with a backlog of nearly 49,000 cases, according to data from the county’s Justice Administration department.

Assistant District Attorney Scott Durfee said in a brief that the sheriff had included categories of people on his list that the DA didn’t agree to consider. Ogg only reviewed people without holds who were detained on nonviolent charges with bail set at $10,000 or less. Durfee indicated the sheriff's list of contenders was padded, or else it did “not make sense” because it included people who have holds.

He also limited his analysis to people facing nonviolent charges.

Ogg’s office whittled the sheriff’s list of 1,543 contenders down to 395. Of that total, Durfee said, prosecutors would entertain lower bail in 12 cases and would agree to or not oppose a personal bond in an additional 48.

Murray Fogler, attorney for the sheriff, said he hoped the 60 people the DA mentioned would be “the low-hanging fruit that should be taken care of promptly.”

Alec Karakatsanis of Civil Rights Corps, who represents thousands of poor defendants in the bail lawsuit, said he was gravely disappointed in the DA’s response.

Spencer, from the sheriff’s office, said the courts are a big part of the problem.

“The criminal court system continues to work at an unsustainably slow pace that is denying justice to victims, defendants and the taxpayers shouldering the cost of an overpopulated jail,” he said.