jail bars (Photo: ANURAK PONGPATIMET/Shutterstock.com)

Four current and seven former district judges in Houston plan to appeal sanctions by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct that claimed their bail bond practices failed to comply with Texas law and cast public discredit on the judiciary.

Harris County's justice system has been in hot water for years over bail bond practices that lead to lengthy incarcerations of indigent defendants. The county lost a major lawsuit that alleged constitutional violations in its misdemeanor courts and recently entered a settlement to reform its bail bond practices.

Public Admonitions

  • 182nd District Judge Jeannine Barr
  • 174th District Judge Hazel Jones
  • 351st District Judge George Powell
  • 337th District Judge Herb Ritchie
  • Former 185th District Judge Susan Brown, who now serves as presiding judge of the 11th Administrative Judicial Region
  • Former 248th District Judge Katherine Cabaniss
  • Former 208th District Judge Denise Collins
  • Former 351st District Judge Mark Ellis
  • Former 180th District Judge Catherine Evans
  • Former 209th District Judge Michael McSpadden
  • Former 263rd District Judge Jim Wallace

In contrast, the public admonitions that the commission released on Thursday deal with district judges who solely handle felony offenses.

Nicole DeBorde, who represented the 11 judges before the commission, said that the public admonitions contain misconceptions about what Texas law says about district judges and felony bail bond practices.

"They've essentially said these judges somehow violated the law," DeBorde said. "That is wholly, 100% incorrect. It is not up to them to make those kinds of determinations. The commission is not a body that is designed to answer questions of law. It is not a court. It is supposed to be strictly to address issues of potential judicial misconduct."

The 11 nearly identical public admonitions explained that Texas law created criminal law hearing officers in Harris County who determine probable cause, conduct magistrations, handle warrants and more. The law says the hearing officers must give defendants time to consult with lawyers and must grant bail within 24 hours of arrest, if it's allowed by the law.

The public admonitions noted that Texas law gives magistrates the authority and discretion to release a defendant on personal bond. The court where a case is pending is the only one that's supposed to set the amount of bail and decide if a defendant should get a personal bond. The law requires a judge to make that decision based on a host of factors, such as the nature of an offense, the safety of a victim and the community and the ability of a defendant to pay bail.

However, the sanctioned district judges gave instructions to the criminal law hearing officers to deny all personal recognizance bonds.

Responding to the judicial commission, the judges all said they wanted to determine bond for defendants in their own courts.

In March 2017, Harris County district judges modified their standard bail practices so that personal bonds would follow the law, and low-risk defendants would be favored for personal bonds. Even after the county's bail practices changed, many of the sanctioned judges told hearing officers to keep following a bond schedule, though amounts were often lowered, depending on the circumstances of cases, said the admonitions.

The commission found that the judges failed to comply with the law and maintain competence in the law when they told hearing officers not to issue personal release bonds on the cases in their courts, and when they told the hearing officers to strictly follow a bail schedule that violated the hearing officers' authority under Texas law. The judges' instructions counted as willful and persistent conduct, which wasn't consistent with their duties as judges, and it cast public discredit on the judiciary, the public admonitions said.

"It's certainly being made to look, based on what the commission printed on the website, that the district court judges gave some kind of order to the magistrates. That is not correct," said DeBorde, a partner at Hochglaube & DeBorde in Houston. "What happened is the magistrates actually asked for guidance on how to handle a variety of bonding situations."

She said the county's judicial administrative office and legal department, on behalf of all of the district judges at the time, crafted responses to the magistrate judges' questions. She questioned why these 11 judges were sanctioned and not others.

Since the sanctions came out, the commission has deleted them from its website. DeBorde said they were withdrawn and the matter is concluded.

Read an example of the nearly identical public admonitions:

Related story:

11 Houston Judges Were Sanctioned. What Happened Next is a Mystery