Lawyers criticize no bail for poor
Preston Chaney died of COVID-19 after more than three months at the Harris County Jail on allegations he stole lawn equipment and frozen meat. Two days later, Chaney’s court-appointed lawyer, who’d logged just two hours on his case, billed for additional work.
Chaney had a hold and was rejected for personal bail under Gov. Greg Abbott’s pandemic order banning the release of anyone with violent charges or prior arrests. Had the 64-year-old been able to scrape together $100, he could have waited for trial away from the packed downtown lockup.
Civil rights lawyers submitted Chaney and others as examples of “abject failure” by judges, prosecutors and private lawyers to hasten the release of thousands of vulnerable people who are presumed innocent and eligible for bail but are stuck at the jail simply because they’re poor. Elizabeth Rossi and a team of lawyers for the jailed pretrial inmates said in a pleading Wednesday that amid a humanitarian crisis, the key decisionmakers kept passing the buck.
The court records they compiled show “deep indifference to human suffering and illness,” they say.
Lawyers and judges should take swift action to make bail reduction hearings happen, Rossi said. “They should hold hearings or release these people.”
The Harris County District At
torney’s Office opposes bail reductions for a list of violent offenses. The plaintiffs say people with money can get out of jail when charged with those offenses by paying high bail, while people without means cannot.
Dane Schiller, spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said, “Prosecutors don’t have the legal authority to order that anyone be held or released from jail, as such decisions are entirely up to judges; prosecutors can merely make recommendations, as can defense lawyers.”
The state attorney general, felony judges and appointed lawyers for inmates highlighted in the pleading did not comment.
But Joe Vinas, presidentelect of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, read the pleading and said of his fellow criminal lawyers: “Some are very good about bonding, some are terrible.” He feels most are doing the best job they can under the circumstances.
Counsel for the indigent defendants say Chaney and many others who would otherwise have qualified for no-cash bonds were unlawfully detained under Abbott’s GA-13.
They showed examples of cases that sat dormant for months while lawyers racked up fees. Some defendants could not get in touch with their lawyers. Several only saw their lawyers at their guilty pleas. As their cases got continually reset, some people caught the coronavirus. Others did their own legal work from the jail, requesting bail reductions and reduced charges in hand-scrawled missives to the court.
A man accused of breaking into a Louisiana Fried Chicken wrote his judge in April that he wanted his charge knocked down to a misdemeanor because he was in “fear for my life at every moment” because of COVID-19. He pleaded guilty in October and was sent to state jail.
Among those they noted languishing in jail were two 17-year-olds, one the mother of an infant. She sat in jail on high bail, while apparently no judge or defense lawyer had made attempts to secure her release.
At 16 status conferences in the federal bail dispute, top state and local stakeholders and lawyers have combed over lists of candidates for release, but the needle hasn’t budged. The jail is still nearly at capacity, with 300 more inmates than it had at the end of 2019, even though bookings are down 25 percent.
The judge in the case, Lee H. Rosenthal, has pleaded with officials to act, remarking that a failure to do so could create a “killing field” at the jail.
Yet court officials aren’t pushing for many bail hearings, the filing says. For example, the sheriff arranged access to video bail hearings, but very few judges took him up on it. Only 72 video bail hearings took place during a 10-month stretch ending in October.
As the virus spread through the jail in March and April, Judge Ramona Franklin of the 338th Criminal Court took six weeks to appoint a lawyer for an inmate named Jacolby Brown.
Kristine Ferrell, 47, who recently pleaded guilty to an assault charge, contracted COVID twice while she was in jail. She told advocates at the Texas Jail Project that her case had been reset five times. During that stretch, she received a letter she thought could help clear her, but she didn’t get a chance to present it because her lawyer had not responded to her queries.
Ferrell, who is disabled, is legally blind and has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, was given a $30,000 bail. She wrote, “I’m at a lost (sic) if I never get a chance to go to court to change counsel or lower my bond How (sic) am I ever going to get a chance to Prove im inosent (sic)?”
Nola Andrews, 17, was arrested in October on a charge of robbery causing bodily injury. Her bail was set at $10,000 because she was a “danger to the community,” but probable cause proceedings offered the view that a co-defendant was the person behind the injury.
The full-time student and mother to a 1-year-old finally posted bail after Judge Te’iva Bell in January granted a lower amount. But Andrews tested positive for COVID and is still in the jail’s medical unit, according to the filing.
Isaiah Fields, also 17, forfeited his bail because of a possible paperwork error. He missed a court date on his aggravated assault case, but only after a judge told him to make his next appearance on a date that had already occurred, court records show
Fields was rearrested, and a judge appointed him an attorney. He remains in jail.