Those of our three readers who have kept up with our coverage on the way the Pre-Trial Release Program operates, know we have serious questions about the way it is operated.
Ostensibly set up by Judge Arturo Nelson and the Cameron County Commissioners Court to relieve jail overcrowding, provide assistant to indigent defendants, and assure the constitutional rights of prisoners are protected while they await trial, it has grown into a self-propagating bureaucracy that seems hell-bent on justifying its existence.
Their own rules state that the program is not meant for repeat violent offenders, only for first-time defendants accused of non-violent crimes.
Yet, we have documented instances of defendants charged with aggravated sexual assault of children walk out on 3 percent bonds the same day they are arrested and booked and return to the homes where they hurt the children.
There are also documented cases of family violence where bargain-rate bonds are set and defendants walk out to return to the same place they committed their alleged offenses against victims.
There have even been defendants who have been charged with assault against peace officers who walk out on the next day they are charged and a bond set.
And there are even cases where people who are clearly not indigent are signed up by the PTRP intake clerks.
But bad as these are, someone brought out the fact that just last year, a man convicted of capital murder whose sentence was overturned by the court of appeals was offered a 3 percent bond ($15,000 on a $500,000 bail) while waiting for a new trial.
The case involved Manuel Velez, whose sentences was reversed and was granted a new trial set for November 2014. Earlier, on December 2012, a legal team reversed Velez’s death sentence.
Even Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz – who was ready to retry Velez, did not agree with the PRTP posting the bond.
He told the Brownsville Herald:
"The State concurs with the Court's decision to grant Velez the $500,000 bond. However, the State does not agree that pre-trial should post the bond..."
Saenz had yet to decide whether his office would seek the death penalty again against Velez, who spent nearly four years on death row before the higher court threw out his capital murder conviction and sentence.
Although a judge recommended a retrial, Velez didn't want to go back to court, so he pleaded no contest to the lesser charge of injury to a child. By accepting the plea, he gained his freedom and was reunited with his two children and other family members.
Yet, the question remains, what has the PRTP become?
If there is no longer any jail overcrowding (Cameron County is going to house 100 prisoners from Hidalgo County for millions), there are plenty of commercial bail bond companies available for prisoners, and the program is demonstrably redundant?
Was it a good idea in its day that has run out its purpose?
5 comments:
It's all a judicial money Racket that suits the Court !
Time to review lawyer jokes. We have too many lawyers and the "justice" system favors the defense over victims.
Juan, you are correct, it "was a good idea in it's day that has run out its purpose". It was instituted at a time when the jail was over crouded and the then DA did not do what he should have, he was too busy making hmself rich, to address the overcrouded situation at the jail. He, the former DA, costs Cameron Co. taxpayers millions of dollars by not getting cases through the system in a timely manner, and causing the County to farm out inmates to other facilities and pay for their daily upkeep, in addition to the County not being able to house Federal prisoners and losing that Federal money. At least our current DA has stepped up and got the job done.
I have always found that if someone in jail was eligable to bond out, they or their family nearly always found the money to pay the Bonding company the money that was necessary to get them out on Bond, and so yes this Pre Trial Diversion Program should be shut down.
Bail is not about creating a business opportunity for those that wish to set up a private bonding company nor should it's primary purpose be to clear crowded jails. It is to foster a means by which those not yet convicted and thus presumed innocent can be released from jail pending final disposition of their case. Consequently, if the county can facilitate this for citizens of the county then it is a good thing.
.......but it's still a racket condone by the "judicial system".
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