Bond rules get testy hearing in Missouri House

Even lawmakers who support the Missouri Supreme Court‘s recent overhaul of its pretrial release rules appeared disturbed by how those rules have been implemented.

The House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 18 took testimony on a bill that would rescind the rule changes the court put in place on July 1. A parade of law enforcement officials in support of the bill told the committee the new rules have caused failure-to-appear warrants to soar and allowed defendants accused of serious but non-violent crimes to be released almost immediately without having to post bond.

Clark County Sheriff Shawn Webster, one of five county sheriffs who spoke, said a man arrested at a house a block from a middle school was “home 25 minutes later” despite having a felony record, several weapons and a bag of crystal meth.

“He didn’t have to bond out,” Webster said. “That’s nuts.”

Both Republican and Democratic members of the committee seemed aghast at the testimony. But while some members favored throwing out the rules, others said local judges appear to be misreading them.

“I agree with you, as I think that everyone on this panel does — that is nuts,” said Gina Mitten, D-St. Louis and an attorney, in response to the Clark County sheriff. But, she added: “This is an issue about educating judges.”

The new rules require judges to impose the “least restrictive condition or combination of conditions” needed to ensure the defendant’s appearance in court and protect public safety. In his state of the judiciary speech in 2019, then-Chief Justice Zel M. Fischer said the rule changes would “ensure those accused of crime are fairly treated according to the law, and not their pocket books.”

But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Justin Hill, R-Lake St. Louis and a former O’Fallon police officer, took issue both with the substance of the court’s rules and the way they were put in place.

“We did not get an opportunity to have this discussion because it was effectively legislated by the Supreme Court through their rulemaking process,” he said at the hearing.

Hill had vowed to file the bill last year in the wake of a shooting at a Kansas City, Kansas, bar that killed four people and injured five others. One of the suspects had several pending felony charges in Missouri, but a Jackson County circuit judge had allowed him to remain free prior to trial without having to post bond.

“I’m for criminal reform. However, we’ve gone too far — or the court has gone too far,” Hill said. Earlier this session, Hill sent a letter signed by 80 legislators urging the Supreme Court to undo the rule changes.

Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, said decisions on bond should be left with local judges.

“We advocate for leaving bail and conditions of release a level playing field, with no presumptions for or against,” he said.

Several of the sheriffs said that if defendants are released after they are arrested without having to post a cash bond, there are no bond agents to ensure the defendants’ appearance in court when their cases are tried. Scott Lewis, sheriff of St. Charles County, said he’s seen a 30 percent increase in failure-to-appear warrants since July.

“There’s no incentive to show up to court,” he said. “We’re spending our manpower and our transportation costs driving around the state and driving around the United States bringing these people back to St. Charles County.”

Wayne Winn, the sheriff in Scotland County, said that, under the court’s current rules, even a man who set fire to a house and then trashed the jail during booking was released on a signature bond.

“Everything he could get ahold of he destroyed. He was out the next day because it did not meet [the definition of] a violent crime,” Winn said.

Mitten, however, pointed to language in the rule that allows judges to consider the defendant’s “character and mental condition,” which she argued should have given the judge plenty of latitude to keep such a defendant in jail.

No judges testified. But Patricia Churchill, a registered lobbyist for the Supreme Court, said judges still are able to set a cash bond if they find the situation warrants it.

“This is not meant to limit in any way the discretion of the judges,” she said, citing a letter from the task force that crafted the rules. Churchill didn’t take a position on the bill itself.

Several groups spoke in favor of keeping the new rules in place. In written testimony, the Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said the court’s rules “are by no means perfect.”

“However, it seems imprudent to haphazardly line through them rather than engage in a constructive process to address specific concerns and adjust the rules to more adequately meet Missouri’s needs,” the organization said. MACDL’s statement notes that bill would undo not only “the heart of the rules changes” concerning the financial status of the defendant but also seemingly useful and noncontroversial items, such as a provision that allows hearings to be conducted by teleconference.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri urged lawmakers to retain the requirement that a defendant’s initial court appearance occur within 48 hours of arrest, excluding weekends and holidays. Reverting to the old rule’s standard of “as soon as practicable” could leave defendants in jailed for “weeks,” said Monica Del Villar, a lobbyist for the ACLU.

But Rep. Mark Ellebracht, D-Liberty, an attorney who otherwise defended the new rules, pressed Del Villar for evidence of such a scenario, which he said was “not realistic.”

“Missouri judges aren’t holding people for several weeks without a bond hearing,” he said.

The bill is HB 1937.