'The people of Texas deserve this': Senate discusses bail reform proposals
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas lawmakers in the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice talked extensively on Wednesday morning about five proposed bail reforms.
“I truly believe that there are hundreds of people dead today that would not be dead if we had incorporated some of this legislation earlier on,” the author of the five bills, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said. “The people of Texas deserve this.”
Here are the key takeaways from Wednesday’s hearing and press conference.
Jocelyn’s Law
The committee’s first action was to name Senate Joint Resolution 1, a proposed constitutional amendment to prevent undocumented defendants from posting bail for felony charges, to “Jocelyn’s Law.”
Jocelyn Nungaray was a 12-year-old Houston girl who was allegedly kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed by a pair of Venezuelan men who entered the country illegally. Both men had been arrested by U.S. Border Patrol for entering the country illegally before Nungaray’s death but were released and told to show up to court at a later date.
“These individuals had no business being here in the first place,” Jocelyn’s mother Alexis Nungaray said during a press conference Wednesday morning. “Anyone who comes here illegally and creates and does crime should not be allowed a bond. It’s not right. It’s very inhumane.”
The bill is intended to pair up with the U.S. Government’s Laken Riley Act, requiring officials to detain immigrants accused of theft, burglary or shoplifting.
Taking aim at ‘The Bail Project’
Proposed Senate Bill 40 (SB 40) would prevent local municipalities from donating taxpayer funds to nonprofits that help defendants post bail they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. While the bill applies to every municipality across the state, the bill’s author Sen. Huffman, had a very specific example in mind.
“We heard some reports that Harris County is spending public funds to pay a nonprofit who’s posted goal is paying a defendant’s bail bond,” Huffman told the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice. “My office has determined that since February of 2022, Harris County issued at least 311 payments for a total of nearly $2.1 million to the Bail Project.”
The Harris County Auditor’s website shows hundreds of invoices paid from the county to the Bail Project. However, the nonprofit says this bill is based on a misunderstanding.
“I want to make it very clear, the bail project has never accepted any public funds in Texas,” Policy Strategist Emma Stammen said. Instead, she claims those invoices are reimbursements to the nonprofit for bail they posted using private donations. “What [Sen. Huffman] was citing from the auditing records is actually a reflection of reimbursements of our own funds coming back to us after our clients have returned to court and resolved their cases.”
Giving judges the power to keep violent criminals in jail
Senate Joint Resolution 5, another proposed constitutional amendment needing a public vote to adopt, would give judges discretion to not allow bond for people held under certain violent charges.
“There’s nothing partisan about asking our judges to hold people accountable when they do horrible things,” Paul Castro said during Wednesday’s presser. Castro’s son David was killed in a road rage incident in 2021. “But that was just the beginning of the horrors… The judge knew that he was a violent offender and tried to set a bail bond high enough that it would not be met — $350,000. Unfortunately because of a loophole in the system, he was able to get out barely a month after he was arrested.”
Current law only gives judges the discretion to hold a defendant in custody for 60 days under no bail holds. SJR 5 would allow judges to hold those who are deemed threats to safety until their trial date.
“The fact that this person who was a known violent offender, was able to achieve a bond at all, and the fact that in order to stop it we would have had to have my 13-year-old son testify as to what happened that night in 60-day intervals for perhaps as long as four years… simply unacceptable,” Castro said.
Proponents of SJR 5 emphasized a pattern of defendants on bail committing more violence.
“This week, we documented 162 cases of defendants who are on bond that are now charged with murder since 2021 in Harris County,” Andy Kahan, director of victim services for Crime Stoppers Houston, said. “There is absolutely no downside in allowing judges discretion. It’s not a mandate, and I’m sure most of the judges in this state would say we would love to have discretion in Jocelyn case. Everybody was outraged when a cash bond was given. How could that happen? It’s capital murder. Well, guess what? The judge had no choice. He had to grant a cash bond. My best guess perhaps, if the judge had a choice, which is what the constitutional amendment would be, there would be no bond.”
In opposition, Stammen called SJR 5 “a dangerous proposal that would undermine public safety and strip legally innocent Texans of their rights and freedoms.”
“Changes to the right to bail must ensure pretrial detention remains the exception, not the norm,” she continued in her written statement to the committee. “SJR 5 would increase family and caregiver separation, employment loss, economic insecurity, housing instability, and worsen medical and behavioral health outcomes.”
