ocbailreform01

This originally appeared on Dispatch.com on August 8, 2021.

You can never get a day back.

We imagine that reality is not lost on people such as Anthony C. Wofford III.

Before being acquitted on April 16, he was stuck in jail for nearly 1,156 days on charges accusing him of killing his boyfriend.

And when Wofford was found not guilty, he got nothing to compensate him for the loss of more than three years of his life.

As in the rest of this nation, you’re innocent in Ohio until proven guilty before Lady Justice, her scale, sword and blindfold.

That technical fact does not mean you won’t find yourself trapped for days, months or even years in what is the modern day equivalent of a debtors’ jail. If you can’t afford bail, you sit and wait for a judge or jury to decide your fate – or you plead guilty to a crime you may or may not have committed.
Maureen O’Connor

“Incarcerating nonviolent offenders pretrial is a needless waste of taxpayer money,” Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor said in May. “(Bail) was not meant to be a mechanism to keep people in jail pretrial.”

Congress outlawed debtors’ jails in 1833, but here in Ohio, people with means routinely buy their freedom with bail money. The poor – a disproportionate number of them people of color – are left to sweat it out behind bars.

In 2017, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction found that more than 35% of local jail inmates were there awaiting trial. The bulk of them could not come up with bail money.

Lawmakers know this fact well.

“Under our current (bail) system, a rich and dangerous defendant can pay to secure their release, while poor defendants languish in jail pretrial, losing their job, their housing, and even in some cases, the custody of their children,” State Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, R-Uhrichsville, wrote in a recent guest column. “How does such a system promote public safety and equal justice under the law? As a practicing attorney, I have seen this all too often in different counties across the State.”

Hillyer is the co-sponsor of the House version of a bill that would end wealth-based detention for non-violent crimes. It would require courts to start from a presumption that most people deserve to be released while awaiting trial.
State Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, R-Uhrichsville, is an attorney. He represents the 98th District, which includes Tuscarawas County and part of Holmes County.

A March poll from the ACLU of Ohio, Ohio Conservatives for Bail Reform and other groups found that 75% of Ohio voters think Ohio’s criminal justice system needs reform.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents supported “reforming Ohio’s bail system so that release decisions are based on individual circumstances and cases, and not how much money someone has.”

As part of the proposed overhaul of the cash bail system, a hearing would be held within 48 hours of a suspect’s arrest. That was favored by 77% of those who took the poll.

“This presumption can be rebutted by evidence that the accused is unlikely to appear at trial or poses a safety threat. If the accused is a flight risk or safety threat, the judge can hold a hearing setting up conditions of the defendant’s release or a hearing on detaining the individual pretrial if they are eligible,” Hillyer wrote.

The proposed changes from a bipartisan group of lawmakers would not apply to violent crimes or in circumstances in which prosecutors believe someone to be a danger to the community.

It is clear that more also should be done to reduce the likelihood that innocent people are harmed due to the two-tier system of justice when it comes to felony crimes.

Neither Senate Bill 182 nor House Bill 315 would have helped Anthony C. Wofford III or the two others acquitted of murder charges in the past four months after spending more than two years in the Franklin County jail.

This is why we say lawmakers should go beyond bail reform.

Wofford maintained he acted in self-defense when he stabbed 27-year-old Kendrick Wilkerson May 31, 2018.

Cellphone video seen by jurors showed Wilkerson attacking Wofford before the stabbing.

Among other things, Wilkerson slammed Wofford’s head against a door and dragged him across the floor by his hair. Wofford eventually lunged toward a kitchen where he grabbed the knife used in the stabbing.

“Even though our client was acquitted, this was such a miscarriage of justice,” defense attorney Brian Joslyn said after the verdict.

Wofford, 28, had no previous felony record, was held in the county jail for nearly three years on a $500,000 bond.

That was a relatively low bail.

Ohio judges routinely set bail at $1 million or more in murder cases. Bail bond typically requires a 10% payment, meaning a defendant would have to come up with $100,000 on a $1 million bond.

A recent Dispatch investigation found that 41 defendants were held in pretrial detention for more than two years in the Franklin County Jail. Eighteen were charged with murder or aggravated murder. The rest faced rape, human trafficking, and high-level drug offense charges. These are the most serious offenses.

To be sure, the public must be protected from dangerous criminals, but suspect rights should not be trampled either.

Lawmakers should seek solutions to ensure that bail is not excessive, the true nature of the allegations are considered and that defendants receive speedy trials.

There is a system in place to compensate people who have been wrongfully convicted, but there is no compensation for those who are acquitted.

Ohio must take immediate action to make sure that people do not lose time they can never get back because they were wrongly penalized before they even had their day in court.

Editorials are The Dispatch Editorial Board’s fact-based assessment of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.

This originally appeared on Dispatch.com on June 26, 2021.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters’ recent attack on bail reform (“Ohio prosecutor: Bail reform bills not the answer to crime,” July 22) reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the legislation I co-sponsor.

While I share Mr. Deters concerns that we should not make excuses for bad behavior, the truth is that Senate Bill 182 and House Bill 315 are designed to fix real public safety problems in our current system that currently allow bad people to engage in bad behavior if they have enough cash to get out of jail.

These bills are far from dangerous and were designed with public safety uppermost in mind. I hope that Mr. Deters will re-evaluate his position and join fellow conservative advocates of change to avoid hurting those with few resources while allowing the well off to potentially harm innocent victims.

In Deters’ telling, our recent bail reform legislation suffers from the same public safety defects as efforts in other states and localities, but other states’ bail reform efforts Deters cites are readily distinguishable from Ohio.

New York, for example, long did not allow judges to even consider public safety in the pretrial decision. Illinois completely eliminated cash bail, and the cities Deters cites have uniformly ended the imposition of cash bail without corresponding pro-public safety reforms. While Deters is right to decry those efforts, he is ultimately comparing apples and oranges.
State Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, R-Uhrichsville, is an attorney. He represents the 98th District, which includes Tuscarawas County and part of Holmes County.

Our reform effort is fundamentally different than these efforts.

Senate Bill 182 and House Bill 315 seek to end our present system of wealth-based detention and instead focus the attention of the pretrial process on public safety and the likelihood a defendant will appear at trial- the ultimate and historical use of bail.

Deters fails to explain how our current system of imposing cash bail to promote public safety, often based on a bail schedule, keeps Ohio communities safe. That’s because there is nothing to suggest cash bail or bail schedules are useful public safety tools.

Under our current system, a rich and dangerous defendant can pay to secure their release, while poor defendants languish in jail pretrial, losing their job, their housing, and even in some cases, the custody of their children. How does such a system promote public safety and equal justice under the law? As a practicing attorney, I have seen this all too often in different counties across the State.

Let’s set the record straight.

Bail reform in Ohio has consistently been a bi-partisan issue with supporters from across the political spectrum as well as key members of the judiciary like Chief Justice O’Connor. Beginning with the Chief Justice’s Task Force for Bail Reform — a group of lawmakers, judges, policy experts and law enforcement professionals on which I was honored to serve — key Ohio leaders have studied this issue closely and have produced solid consensus reform proposals.

The bills would create a presumption that all Ohioans, who are innocent until proven guilty, are released pretrial. This presumption can be rebutted by evidence that the accused is unlikely to appear trial or poses a safety threat. If the accused is a flight risk or safety threat, the judge can hold a hearing setting up conditions of the defendant’s release or a hearing on detaining the individual pretrial if they are eligible.

This reasonable process balances the need to protect Ohio’s communities and the rights of the accused.

It ensures that truly dangerous defendants are either detained pretrial or given restrictive conditions of release. And, critically, our reforms also expand the list of crimes presently eligible for pretrial detention to felony domestic violence and violation of a protection order offenses. It also still allows judges to impose cash bail if the defendant is unlikely to appear at trial. Appearance was always the purpose of cash bail — the bond secures the accused’s appearance at trial. Other tools, like pretrial detention and release conditions like no-contact orders, supervised release, among many others, are designed to promote public safety.

These reforms clearly seek to move Ohio away from a dangerous system where the rich walk free and the poor are relegated to jail, even if defendants are accused of the same crime. Our pretrial justice system must better promote public safety and due process; that’s what Senate Bill 182 and House Bill 315 do. I look forward to working with criminal justice leaders across the State to pass this important piece of legislation for all Ohioans.

State Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, R-Uhrichsville, is an attorney. He represents the 98th District, which includes Tuscarawas County and part of Holmes County

This originally appeared on Dispatch.com on May 19, 2021.

Sixty percent of people sitting in Ohio jails have never been convicted of a crime.

They’re there because they can’t afford to make bail, Rep. David Leland, D-Columbus, said. “What happens to those people?”

A bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers says those folks can sit in jail for days, weeks or even months while they wait on a trial. They lose jobs. They lose homes. They lose custody of their children.

Sometimes they plead guilty to a lesser crime – even if they believe themselves to be innocent – just to get out, Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said.

That’s why McColley, Leland and 48 other state lawmakers have signed onto two companion bills in the Ohio House and Senate that would overhaul how courts use cash bail across the state.

The bills, which don’t have numbers yet, would require courts to start from a presumption that most people deserve to be released while awaiting trial. This would not apply to violent crimes or cases where prosecutors believe someone to be a danger to the community.

Then, within 48 hours of arrest, Leland said, there has to be a hearing on conditions of release.”

A means test for cash bail

Courts have a multitude of options and only one of them is cash bail, he said. The others include mandatory drug testing, electronic monitoring, prohibiting contact with victims or potential witnesses, holding weekly phone calls and handing over passports.

If courts wanted to use bail, then both Leland and McColley’s bills would require a means test.

Basically, the court would total up a person’s income and subtract their expenses (rent, utilities, car payments, childcare, etc). Bail could be no more than 25% of whatever that equation spits out. It wouldn’t matter whether the person earned $15,000 or $150,000. It’s always 25% of their income minus expenses.

Leland said courts couldn’t have bail schedules where one crime requires $1,000 bail while another offense is $2,500.

Bail, McColley said, would be based on individual resources.

Bipartisan support for reform

The idea has support from groups like The Bail Project, a nonprofit that pays bail for people across the country. But it also has support from conservative groups like the Buckeye Institute and the Ohio chapter of Americans for Prosperity.

And it has the support of Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor.

“Incarcerating nonviolent offenders pretrial is a needless waste of taxpayer money,” O’Connor said Tuesday. “(Bail) was not meant to be a mechanism to keep people in jail pretrial.”

McColley introduced a similar bill during the last General Assembly. He said it failed for two reasons: There wasn’t enough time to debate it, and some data validation tools the bill required made courts nervous.

“This bill has none of that in it,” he said.

Instead, it directs courts to increase their contact with those awaiting trial. Leland compared it to the way your dentist or hairdresser sends out reminder texts and emails about upcoming appointments.

“This is not a complete elimination of cash bail,” McColley said.

Bail agents oppose the bills

The groups who opposed previous versions of McColley and Leland’s bills have said restricting how bail is used subverts the power and independence of Ohio courts.

And practically speaking, Ohio Bail Agents Association Vice President Woody Fox isn’t sure how this means testing is going to work.

“When they got 100 people in Franklin County Municipal Court every morning, they are going to figure all that out before they appear in court,” Fox said. “I understand what they are trying to fix, but I don’t know how in the world they are going to run reports on everybody.”

Fox said he doesn’t want people sitting in jail because they can’t afford bail either, but he regularly sees people with 10, 20 or 30 missed court appearances.

“We put ankle monitors on people when we get them out, and we make them pay for them,” Fox said. “Are taxpayers going to pay for more monitors? Are they going to pay for all this new paperwork? Are they going to pay for more cops to go track these guys down?”

This originally appeared on Dispatch.com on May 15, 2021. Written by Andrew J. Geisler .

Individuals accused of crimes are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But Ohio’s overreliance on cash bail means this bedrock principle of our criminal justice system all too often is more theory than practice.

The Ohio Supreme Court’s recent updates to the state’s criminal rule on pretrial practices took a huge step forward by presuming a defendant’s release pretrial, unless that defendant poses a flight risk or is a risk to the community. But work remains to be done to reform Ohio’s pretrial system.

Policymakers can codify the Supreme Court’s presumption of release rule and take additional steps to ensure that state courts treat all defendants fairly in the pretrial decision.

Unfortunately, Ohio’s two-tiered criminal justice system still allows some to buy their freedom through cash bail while leaving others waiting in jail before trial because they cannot afford even nominal bail.

It is time to change the failed system. And Ohioans agree. Recent polling shows 67% of Ohioans favor “reforming Ohio’s bail system so that release decisions are based on individual circumstances and cases and not how much money someone has.”

Even as bail systems fail to protect fundamental constitutional rights, they offer no guarantee of public safety and too often invite tragedy.

Dragan Sekulic, for example, used his car in 2015 as a battering ram in an attempt to kill his ex-wife. Sekulic had previously faced a domestic violence charged, but still posted a $100,000 bond after being charged with felonious assault, domestic violence, and operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

So the court released him to await trial. His ex-wife survived the car crash, but two weeks after he posted bail and walked out of jail, Sekulic shot and killed her.

Ohio’s current bail regime allows cash bail to serve as an illegitimate proxy for public safety, allowing dangerous defendants to pay cash to offset their threat to public safety. But the public’s safety should not depend on a defendant’s deep pockets. Judges should only impose cash bail to ensure that the accused appears for trial.

Defendants posing a threat to the community can and should have pretrial restrictions, including pretrial detention or supervised release for more serious crimes, and less restrictive release conditions for less serious crimes, as appropriate. And detaining defendants who pose safety risks to the community, while releasing those who do not will enhance public safety and improve criminal case outcomes.

A recent study by the ACLU of Ohio revealed that “those who remain in jail pretrial — compared with those who are released or…purchase their pretrial release [with bail] —are more likely to be convicted, more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison, and their sentences are longer. This is due not only to the increased likelihood of those held behind bars feeling coerced into taking plea deals, but also because it is harder to build successful cases from behind bars.”

Beyond improving criminal justice in Ohio, bail reform will save the state — and Ohio taxpayers — money. With the average Ohio jail bed costing communities around $65 per day and a defendant’s supervised release only $5 per day, The Buckeye Institute estimates that bail reform will save Ohio more than $67 million a year.

Our criminal justice system rests on the bedrock of innocence until proven guilty, and the ancillary principle that “liberty is the norm” and detention “without a trial is the carefully limited exception.” That carefully limited exception should be based on concerns for public safety, not the accused’s financial resources. Justice demands it and the people of Ohio agree.

Andrew J. Geisler is a legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute and an expert in criminal justice reform.

This originally appeared on Cleveland.com on March 24, 2021. Written by Micah Derry and Claire Chevrier.

CLEVELAND — Seventy-five percent of Ohio voters believe Ohio’s criminal justice system needs reform. According to Brian Tringali from The Tarrance Group, the conservative firm that conducted the new poll that reveals this, “it’s hard to get 75% of Ohio voters to agree the sky is blue.”

So how’s it possible criminal justice and bail reform have captured the bipartisan hearts and minds of Ohioans?

Because they make sense. Whether you’re concerned about public safety, believe in “innocent until proven guilty,” or want to conserve taxpayer dollars, bail reform is an issue you should care about, and according to this poll, you probably already do.

Depending on where someone is arrested in Ohio, because practices vary, they may have the opportunity to buy their freedom through a bond schedule. If they can’t afford bond, they’ll likely remain in jail. Once in front of a judge, it’s again possible — in some areas, likely — that their release will be contingent on their ability to post cash bail. Those with resources go home, those without remain jailed, with very little influence from evidence shedding light on guilt or innocence.

This does not promote public safety. According to a 2017 report from The Buckeye Institute, “the money-based bail system has led to perverse instances in which dangerous but well-off defendants roam free pending trial, while many low-level offenders who pose no real threat to the community but cannot afford bail remain in jail for days, weeks, or even months until trial.”

Unnecessary pretrial detention creates long-lasting harms for individuals, families, and communities. People who remain jailed pretrial are put at risk of losing their job, their home, and even custody of their children, and these harms can occur even if someone is ultimately found innocent. People who remain jailed pretrial are also more likely to get convicted, get sentenced to jail or prison, and their sentences are longer compared with those charged with the same crime and released pretrial. This undermines our constitutional rights; we are innocent until proven guilty.

It’s also expensive. According to a 2020 report from the ACLU of Ohio, it costs Ohio taxpayers up to $306 million annually to jail legally innocent individuals who have not yet had their days in court. Sixty-three percent of those jailed pretrial are held on misdemeanors or non-person felonies (felonies committed against property, not an individual). Ohio would save up to $264 million annually if it released people based on whether they pose a threat, instead of how much money they have.

To quote an article by the New Hampshire affiliates of Americans for Prosperity and the ACLU, “it is critical to note that people who are released pretrial are not getting away ‘scot free.’ They will still be held accountable for the charges against them.” Further, in Ohio, those charged with the most serious crimes are eligible for preventative detention, a determination by a judge that someone must remain in jail pretrial if there is no safe alternative.

Ultimately, it’s unsurprising that 67% of Ohioans favor reforming Ohio’s bail system so release decisions are based on individual circumstances and cases, not personal finances. Seventy-seven percent of Ohioans favor requiring a hearing on release options and conditions in front of a judge within 48 hours of detention. Sixty-nine percent support a release path for most people to go home the same day they’re arrested if they don’t pose a flight risk and are not a threat to anyone.

So perhaps the real surprise is that, with such extensive public support, these reforms are not already Ohio law. But they can be. And these poll results indicate that, overwhelmingly, Ohioans will support legislators in Columbus passing true bail reform.

Micah Derry is state director at the Ohio chapter of Americans for Prosperity, where he coordinates grassroots efforts and advocates for economic and criminal justice reform. Claire Chevrier is policy counsel at the ACLU of Ohio, where she leads their statewide advocacy on bail reform.