A federal appeals court has ruled that people arrested in Texas who cannot afford to make bail do not have a Constitutional right to be released without bond, overturning an effort by several judges in Harris County to fight the growing problem of Texas jails being packed with people who have not been committed of a crime, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Texas in its jurisdiction, says individuals who are arrested have a right to see a magistrate within 48 hours, but that magistrate is not required to take the person's ability to pay bond into consideration when the bail is set.
A new report shows as many as two thirds of the inmates in urban county jails are there to because they have been convicted of any crime, but because they have been arrested and cannot afford bail, which general requires a person to pay ten percent of the amount in cash.
Magistrate Court Judges in Harris County, who filed the appeal along with the American Bail Coalition, which is made up of bail bond companies, says since the Harris County effort to allow misdemeanor defendants who could not afford bail to be released without bail, as many as 50% of defendants were failing to appear for their court dates.
"Vindication is the best word to describe the outcome in this decision," said Jeff Clayton, Executive Director of the ABC. "It is too bad taxpayer money had to be wasted because a federal judge gave plaintiffs more relief than they settled for and agreed was consitutional."
The issue of the fairness of the current system of cash bail is a growing civil rights problem. Activists argue that the system is unfair because it allows wealthy defendants in criminal cases to walk free while low income defendants sit in jail, sometimes for years, simply because they can't afford bond. They say this has created a 'two tier' system of justice and leads to county jail overcrowding and jail suicides, and encourage judges to use alternatives like electronic monitoring for low income defendants.
"The Constitution does not require mandatory release of those who cannot afford bail," the appeals court said in its ruling.
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