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IN CONTEXT ODONNELL
The 2018 election happened amid ODonnell v. Harris County, a lawsuit regarding the county’s misdemeanor cash bail policies. After a federal court order, a bail policy change by new Democratic misdemeanor judges and the lawsuit’s settlement, the county no longer uses a cash bail system for most misdemeanor o enses. SOURCES: HARRIS COUNTY OFFICE OF THE ELECTIONS ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT, HARRIS COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTS AT LAW COMMUNITY IMPACT
Fifteen Republican
A lawsuit against the county is led
Sixteen Harris County misdemeanor judges are added as defendants to the lawsuit.
Sheri Ed Gonzalez, County Criminal Court at Law No. 16 Judge Darrell Jordan and District Attorney Kim Ogg win elections but are not parties to the case.
NOV.14, 2014
MAY 19 2016
AUG. 31, 2016
NOV. 8, 2016
misdemeanor judges all win their elections.
by Maranda Lynn ODonnell, a single mother held in jail for three days who could not pay a $2,500 bond.
in the November 2019 ODonnell Con- sent Decree, which eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanor arrestees. Now, with elections nearing in Novem- ber for 15 out of 16 County Criminal Courts at Law—which hear Class A and Class B misdemeanor cases—Jones said the debate over the e ectiveness of the county’s reforms could spill into cam- paigns for judicial races. “You’re de nitely going to see the Republican judicial candidates as a group use the idea of criminals out on bail … and particularly criminals out on [personal recognizance] bonds as one of their principal campaign mes- sages,” Jones said. Path to the ODonnell decree When ODonnell v. Harris County was led in May 2016, it named the county, then-Sheri Ron Hickman and ve hearing o cers—who set bail for misdemeanor arrestees—as defen- dants, but an amended complaint from August 2016 added the 16 Republican misdemeanor judges. Dan Spjut, a Republican and former judge of County Criminal Court at Law No. 10 in 2016 who lost his seat in 2018 and is running to be reinstated, said he believes the lawsuit was “nonsense.” “The system that we were oper- ating under was not perfect by any means, … but there was never any- body in jail in my court on a misde- meanor,” Spjut said. However, Rosenthal’s 193-page opin- ion from April 2017 stated more than 100 people were detained in the county jail each day who would have been released if they could have a orded their cash bail. The judge put an emergency stop on the county’s misdemeanor cash bail system through a preliminary injunc- tion, which was the focus of a study released Aug. 30 by the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School’s pol- icy hub, the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice.
Paul Heaton, the academic direc- tor of the Quattrone Center, said he believes the injunction was “largely successful,” reducing conviction rates by 9% and pleas by 15% from the period of 2017 prior to the injunction in April to the remainder of 2017 after the injunction. Heaton said he spoke with misdemeanor judges and believes they did not think they were causing harm. “[The judges] were following what had been done in the past and their training and their gut instincts. [Data] can be helpful … to recognize places where that experience or instinct could lead us astray,” he said. Following the injunction, the judges who won in 2018 amended the county’s misdemeanor bail prac- tices and settled the ODonnell case in November 2019, ushering in the ODonnell Consent Decree. The decree releases most misdemeanor arrestees on personal recognizance bonds— meaning they promise to return to court without paying a cash deposit— and requires those ineligible for such bonds to receive representation from a public defender and a hearing within 48 hours of their arrest. Duke University law professor Bran- don Garrett is the court-appointed monitor who oversees the decree. His fth report released Sept. 3 showed the share of cases resulting in a con- viction dropped to 23% in 2020 from 59% in 2015 with the outcome of 18% of 2020 cases undetermined. Clash over bail reform Heaton said he worries some con- ate misdemeanor and felony bail reform—the latter of which has not occurred in Harris County. Ken W. Good, an attorney who rep- resents bail bondspersons, spoke at the Aug. 25 TSU bail reform panel and said he believes “misdemeanors [are] the training ground today for tomor- row’s felonies.” But Heaton said this is not borne out by the evidence from
MEASURING MISDEMEANOR BAIL REFORM EFFECTS A Sept. 3 report from the federal monitor overseeing the ODonnell Consent Decree analyzed the county’s misdemeanor bail reforms. The number of misdemeanor cases led and the percentage of cases resulting in convictions have declined since 2015.
Percentage of misdemeanor arrestees rearrested within 365 days
Number of Harris County misdemeanor cases led
62,345
55,262
2015
2021
0 10K 20K 30K 40K 50K 60K 70K 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 61,244 53,090 51,903 45,481 49,710
27%
25%
*24,219
Rearrests have also dropped slightly since 2015.
*DATA IS FOR THE FIRST HALF OF 2022.
Case disposition outcomes Conviction No disposition observed
Dismissal/acquittal
Deferred adjudication
Deferred adjudication:
2015 2016 2017 *2018 2019 2020 2021
59% 56% 48% 38% 26% 23% 19%
31%
8% 7% 5% 4% 10%
2% 3% 3% 5% 3% 3% 2%
agreement places defendant under
34%
community supervision
44%
54%
61%
No disposition observed: outcome of the case remains undetermined
18%
56%
31%
48%
SOURCE: ODONNELL MONITOR’S FIFTH REPORT COMMUNITY IMPACT
*DUE TO ROUNDING, DATA FOR 2018 ADDS TO 101%.
Cash bail for misdemeanors was scrutinized in 2017 after U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal found the coun- ty’s policy of using cash bail to hold people in jail while they awaited trial violated the U.S. Constitution. Elizabeth Rossi represented the plainti s in that lawsuit, including Maranda Lynn ODonnell—a single mother who was arrested for driving with an invalid license and held in jail for three days after being unable to pay a $2,500 cash bond. “The crux of our claims [was] that
it’s a really big deal to take away a person’s freedom,” Rossi, the director of strategic initiatives at D.C.-based nonpro t Civil Rights Corps, told Community Impact. While the lawsuit was underway, the 2018 midterm elections ipped the county’s misdemeanor court judges from entirely Republican to entirely Democrat, according to Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. The newly elected Democratic cohort settled the lawsuit, culminating
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