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. For Nungaray, she says having the bill named after her daughter is bittersweet.
“It reminds me that I’m really making change for her and I am really continuously being her voice,” Nungaray explained.
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’s 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.”
What’s next?
Four of the five bills in Huffman’s bail reform package passed out of committee on Wednesday with unanimous support. Huffman said she wanted to leave SB 1047 pending in committee, which deals with enhancing the Public Safety Report System.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said these bills will likely pass out of the Senate next week, and he made a promise that he will play “hardball” with the Texas House of Representatives to make sure these bills are passed this session.
“As far as I’m concerned, if these bills do not pass the House, I see no reason for us not to go to a special session, and another special session, and another special session,” Patrick said during a news conference when asked what “hardball” would look like.
April Aguirre, the aunt of Arlene Alvarez, who was shot and killed while going to Valentine’s Day dinner with her family, said she will be bringing more advocates for the bills to House committee hearings when they reach that point. She says people who want to testify during those hearings
can reach out to her on her X account.
The lieutenant governor said he hopes the bills will pass out of the Senate with full bipartisan support, but at least one Senate Democrat has already expressed reservations on SJR 5.
State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, said these bills have the potential to place more people in the “crosshairs of our criminal justice system,” and says she is preparing for debate next week.
“As lawmakers, we should defend that presumption strenuously. Right now these bills suggest a greater interest in undermining it for political purposes than upholding it in pursuit of solutions to truly keep Texans safe,” Eckhardt said in a news release.
Her office points to data from Harvard’s Kennedy School’s Social Policy Data Lab which reports the pre-trial detention rates in the United States are 50% higher than Russia. Eckhardt believes the state must vigorously prosecute violent crime, but it must be done in a way that respects due process and the presumption of innocence before trial, according to a spokesperson in her office.
