New bond rules take effect with revisions scheduled for January

A raft of new rules on setting bond for criminal defendants took effect on July 1, with additional revisions scheduled for Jan. 1, 2020.

In the July 8 issue of Missouri Lawyers Weekly, we incorrectly reported the nature and timing of the rule changes. We regret those errors. Following are some of the most notable changes and the ways in which the Missouri Supreme Court is instituting them.

As of July 1, when judges set bond and release a defendant pretrial, they must aim for the “least restrictive” conditions of release that are necessary to secure the defendant’s appearance at trial and protect the community or the victim. Non-monetary conditions must be considered first; if the judges do impose a monetary condition, they must take into account the defendant’s ability to pay.

Also as of July 1, once a suspect is arrested and confined in the county where the warrant was issued, judges generally will have 48 hours to set bond at an initial appearance. If the judges do order further detention of a defendant, they must have clear and convincing evidence it is necessary — and in that case, the defendant has a right to a bond-review hearing within seven days and a trial within 120 days of requesting one (or within 120 days of a venue change, whichever occurs later).

The Supreme Court originally announced these changes in an order dated Dec. 18, declaring that they would take effect on July 1. Six days before the onset of the rules, the high court announced various tweaks to the language of some rules, apparently in response to concerns raised by local judges faced with implementing them.

But in a flurry of orders on June 30, the court delayed those tweaks by six months to Jan. 1, 2020, rather than allow them to take effect on July 1. As a result, the changes announced Dec. 18 went into effect virtually in their original form. The court didn’t provide an explanation for the last-minute change in course.

The tweaks that will take effect on Jan. 1, in turn, will change some of the rules that just went into effect on July 1. For example, in the language governing initial appearances, as of Jan. 1, the 48-hour deadline for holding an initial appearance will begin once the defendant is “confined under the warrant in the county that issued the warrant,” rather than is merely “confined in the county” where it was issued. This appears to allow for multiple warrants issued by separate jurisdictions within the same county to be dealt with consecutively, instead of concurrently.

Other Jan. 1 tweaks to the rules appear to come from the recognition that many counties don’t have their own jails and instead must send their pretrial defendants to jails in neighboring counties. For these defendants, the 48-hour clock will start ticking for their initial appearances once they are confined “in a county with which the county issuing the warrant has a contractual agreement to hold the defendant.” In addition, the Jan. 1 language explicitly allows initial appearances to take place “by interactive video technology.”

As for individuals who have had an initial appearance and are re-arrested after violating the conditions of their release, they, too, must appear before the judge within 48 hours under the July 1 rules. But on Jan. 1, that window extends to seven days.