The men’s bail hearings at the Edward F. Borgerding District Court begin a little after 11AM on a morning in early April.
Nine men in yellow jumpsuits join the attorneys, pre-trial agents, some spectators - mostly loved ones, and Judge Halee F. Weinstein in courtroom four. They appear on the thick television screen live from Central Booking and Intake Center fifteen minutes away.
“Good morning, gentleman. Can you hear me?” the judge asks. Someone in the front row fidgets at the sound of her voice.
The courtroom has five pews for public seating at the rear, a judge’s bench at the front, a television set to the left of the room angled towards the pews, and two tables splitting the area before the judge’s bench. Five defense attorneys from the Public Defender’s Office split two rows and form a clump. Their business professional attire contrasts the casual attire of the other spectators.
A woman in a nurse’s uniform, eyes red from crying sits next to a young woman who might be her daughter. The only male attorney finished attempting to comfort her about two minutes ago. A man in a quarter zip with the word “Thread” stitched into it sits in the very last pew. In the middle, a mother who looks to be in her 40s sits next to two younger women. They appear composed.
The state of Maryland conducts all bail review hearings with videoconferencing technology. The technology eliminates the costs and contingencies of transporting defendants to and from courthouses; but, the benefits of the technology do not fall to the defendant, legal experts argue. The technology compromises communication between the attorney, defendant, and judge, they assert, and dehumanizes as it fails to protect defendants’ constitutional rights.
After Weinstein greets the men, she reviews the rights the men heard in a video prior to the hearing. She calls Ronald Edward Stevens of Whistler Avenue. An attorney walks to the leftmost table and takes her place in front of Weinstein. Stevens is 36 years old, white, and an unemployed tow truck driver. He completed the 11th grade. He faces a maximum penalty of life for first degree murder. All present in the courtroom and at Central Booking learn that for three years he used ecstasy and marijuana daily. He once participated in a robbery. Pre-trial services, a group that evaluates defendants prior to bail hearings, has labeled him an extreme threat to safety.
Baltimore City uses a risk assessment tool to help with pre-trial recommendations. The day after an arrest, a staff member from the City’s Pretrial Release Services Program (PRSP) interviews the defendant. The interviewer collects information about background, employment, criminal history, drug use, and anything else that may be important. The interviewer verifies this information with family members, friends, employers. Then, the Bail Review Unit inputs this information into the risk assessment tool. Individual circumstances may change the weights of various inputs.
The recommendation for Stevens is no bail.
“My client has been forthcoming. He admits to the incident and the victim’s body was where he said it would be,” the defense attorney says. Stevens has been home for the last several weeks and no allegations have been made against him. The attorney defends her client in vain. Weinstein interrupts the attorney, “What do you mean forthcoming?! The physical evidence was inconsistent with the statement given by the defendant!” The hearing pretty much ends there.
Weinstein determines that “no conditions of release would ensure the public’s safety or appearance in court.” Held without bail.
The attorney says thank you and exits the courtroom. Stevens disappears from the screen.
The whole thing lasts no more than 7 minutes.
Bail hearings are not trials. Zina Makar, a University of Baltimore faculty member and co-founder and co-director of the Pretrial Justice Clinic emphasizes the differences between trials and hearings. Length and the presence of defendant alone do not distinguish the two. “In a trial, there are lots of procedural protections to remedy prejudices.” Procedural protections safeguard against actions at all level of governments that may deprive a person of their right to life, liberty, or property.
The use of videoconferencing in bail hearings represents a violation of the safeguards provided in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, Makar insists. Defendants are not physically present and relegated to the sidelines of a hearing with significant implications for future proceedings.
---
In February 2017, the Maryland Court of Appeals adopted Rule 4-216.1 which discourages the use of excessive cash bail in the hopes of increasing the number of defendants released on their own recognizance. Recognizance is the term for an official agreement with a court to show up. Judges have the option of offering pre-trial services to defendants to ensure their appearance, too.
Maryland’s cash-bail system used to hit low-income residents particularly hard. A 2018 Princeton report examining the Maryland bail reform listed the median bail for a felony in New York City in 2015 at $5,000. The average bail for a felony at an initial bail hearing in Maryland was $90,000. The reform comes during a period of intense distrust and disapproval of the criminal justice system in Baltimore. As the US media has repeatedly drawn attention to issues like the disproportionate arrests and confinement of minorities and the poor, they have also begun to shine light on the bail system.
The cash bail system has met intense scrutiny in recent decades for those same reasons. People who don’t have enough money to pay bail are left with options that victimize them further. They may spend months in jail and lose their jobs or apartments, enter a predatory bond, or plead guilty to speed up the process. Organizations, including Open Society Institute-Baltimore, currently prioritize pre-trial and bail reform.
Baltimore City has the largest pre-trial population in Maryland. The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services reports the number of pre-trial bookings for 2018 as 25,180. The number of those sent to jail was 12,506. A 2014 report by the Commission to Reform Maryland’s Pretrial System found that over 65 percent of those held in Maryland jails had not been convicted.
Since the rule’s enactment, pre-trial detention in Maryland has significantly dropped. The number of people held on cash bail has declined and the number of people released on their own recognizance has increased. But all outcomes have not been positive. A 2017 Maryland Judiciary report revealed that the number of people with “hold without bail” status has increased.
Back in the courtroom, Judge Weinstein placed seven of the nine defendants at the April 3 bail hearings on “hold without bail.” By law, this ruling should be made only if the person sufficiently found to be an unmanageable threat to public safety or is unlikely to show up in court. Judges must consider such things as the nature and circumstances of the charges, the defendant’s prior record of appearance at court proceedings, the defendant’s family ties, employment status and history, and any information presented by the defendant or defendant’s attorney.
But how much can they truly do this in a hearing under 10 minutes?
One defendant, referred to only as “Mr. Simpson,” illustrates the problems here. Simpson is unemployed. He did not complete high school. He has prior history with the system, something he did at the age of 15 or 16, about the same time he stopped going to school. He fathered Devin, who turns three at the month’s end. His mother, girlfriend, and aunt sit in the pews. He regularly attends church.
Police arrested Simpson after he had been shot seven times. He could not flee the scene due to injuries. The attorney mentions a social security disability determination. A bullet lodged in his hip. The attorney ties it all together, “Mr. Simpson should be in surgery today, but [he is] at bail….His colostomy bag has not been changed since he has been in jail. This is bordering on an eighth amendment violation.”
But Weinstein declines to assign him bail and orders him back to jail. She will assign a medical order for him and have someone follow up at Central Booking, she says. The girlfriend and aunt sniffle and their heads sink.
Simpson does not consult with his attorney to provide details or make clarifications. The space and privacy simply don’t exist. Simpson watches silently as someone else tries to humanize him.
At bail hearings, defendants have to prove via their attorney that they are worthy of release. The presumption of innocence does not factor in at this stage. The people with bail hearings are the worst of the worst, says Makar. These people have serious charges against them, generally not misdemeanors.
Still, Baltimore can do better.
Melissa Rothstein, Director of Policy and Development for the Public Defender System, suggests that the City is aware of its deficiencies. We are working on improving the scope of pretrial services, she says. “Judges are expressive about the insufficient [pre-trial] resources,” Rothstein adds. When asked about the impact of the 2017 bail reform, Rothstein points out that judge buy-in on the change has been a hurdle which may explain why numbers of people held without bail has increased. “There are a lot of people arrested [and judges are] dealing with [a] large volume of bail reviews, [which] encourages things to remain the way they are.”
Community-based resources can really make a difference for people and significantly decrease unnecessary spending. It costs about $200 dollars a day to house someone in a Baltimore City jail. A drug user would benefit more from reporting to a treatment center than jail time, experts insist.
An Open Society Institute-Baltimore report on pretrial services in Maryland counties, applauds the work of Baltimore City Pretrial Release Services. The city’s services lead the way, which may come as a surprise. More than 93% of participants in the Baltimore City Pretrial Release Services Program appeared for all court dates, and more than 97% had no new arrests.
The state of Maryland and Baltimore City, specifically, have committed themselves to pursuing justice for its most vulnerable populations through the pre-trial system. They have made significant strides in doing so as evidenced by some major feats.
But if the handful of hearings witnessed on April 3 were any indication, pretrial services in Baltimore City (and the State of Maryland) has miles to go.