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20 hours ago
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Bail reform legislation dies in Texas House. Will Greg Abbott call a special session?
Two proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution which were a major part of GOP-priority bail reform legislation are dead after the state House declined to pass them by a Wednesday deadline. Senate Joint Resolution 1 and SJR 87 were part of the bail reform package authored by Houston Republican Sen. Joan Huffman and backed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and a bipartisan majority of the state Senate. Neither resolution, however, garnered the constitutionally required 100-vote supermajority to advance from the House to a November statewide referendum despite attempts by supporters to rally additional votes. Down to the wire: Key highlights from Texas' legislative session with one week to go SJR 1 — called "Jocelyn's Law" after 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found last year in a Houston bayou after allegedly being bound, sexually assaulted and strangled to death by two men believed to be in the U.S. illegally — would have kept defendants charged with a felony who are in the U.S. without legal authorization in jail until trial. It died with an 87-39 third-reading vote Wednesday. SJR 87 would have required judges to automatically deny bail to suspects accused of nine specific serious crimes — including murder, capital murder, aggravated sexual assault and human trafficking — if the person had been previously convicted of, or is out on bond for, one of those offenses. The resolution died Tuesday with a 97-40 vote, just three supporters short of making it on this fall's statewide ballot. The measure was not reconsidered despite indications lawmakers hoped to bring it back for another vote. Supporters of the legislation, including House sponsor Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, framed the bills as a matter of life and death, citing homicides allegedly committed by defendants who were already out on bail for a different charge. "Had we passed this constitutional amendment six years ago, there would be little boys and girls still alive today who were tragically killed," Smithee said during debate on SJR 1 last week. "I can promise you this: If we adopt this amendment and the voters approve it, it will save innocent human life. Period." Democratic House members, however, have argued the measures are discriminatory and strip suspects of their constitutional right to due process. "A lot of folks are going to be tied up in this that are members of my community," said Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, during debate on SJR 1 on Wednesday. "Laws like this, and putting this before the public and asking them to go out and vote so you can throw away the key when some undocumented person ends up in jail, that hurts our communities." More: Texas House advances bail reform package while immigration-related proposal faces challenges Lawmakers have approved several other parts of Huffman's bail reform package, including a proposed constitutional amendment which, if adopted by voters, would give judges greater discretion to deny bail to defendants charged with certain violent offenses. Senate Democrats praised the passage of that amendment, SJR 5, in a statement late Thursday after the upper chamber voted to accept House changes to the legislation and send the measure to voters. "We faced two hard truths this session. One: Families have lost loved ones to violent crimes committed by people who never should have been released. Two: Our justice system holds too many people behind bars who don't belong there — people not yet convicted and who aren't dangerous but can't afford bail," the statement reads. "We supported SJR 5 because it acknowledges both realities." At least one Republican House member belives the failure of several pieces of bail reform legislation in the lower chamber will prompt Abbott to call lawmakers back for a special session. 'I have no doubt that we will be called into a special session if this is not passed,' Rep. J.M. Lozano, R-Kingsville, wrote in a post on X after a Tuesday vote. 'We will ask for it to be reconsidered and will not stop until it passes.' Only the governor can call a special session. Bail reform has been one of Abbott's key issues. The Republican designated the legislation an emergency item during his biennial State of the State address in February toward the beginning of the legislative session. The governor has consistently voiced support for the measures on social media, firing off a spate of tweets in recent weeks urging lawmakers to vote in favor of the legislation. He also made an impromptu visit to the House last week, ostensibly to shore up support for bail reform and other legislative priorities. Speaking briefly with reporters on the House floor last week, Abbott was clearly pleased with the passage of much of the bail reform package but urged lawmakers to push through the remaining items. "We've been working hard on this for a long time," the governor said after chatting informally with several House members. "Too many people have been murdered because of the broken bail system that we've had. "It needs to get done." This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Bail reform bills die in Texas House. Will Abbott call special session?
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3 days ago
- Business
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Automatic denial of bail for some migrants fails to pass Texas House
The Texas House on Wednesday rejected a novel proposal asking voters to amend the state Constitution to automatically deny bail to any unauthorized migrant accused of certain felonies, with Democrats holding firm to jettison the final piece of Gov. Greg Abbott's priority bail package. Senate Joint Resolution 1, the last measure still eligible for House approval out of a broader package tightening the state's bail laws, fell far short of the 100 votes necessary to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, winning support from all Republicans and just two Democrats — Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, the top Democratic negotiator on bail, and Rep. Richard Raymond of Laredo. The final vote was 87 to 39, with four Democrats declining to take a position and marking themselves present. Under the state Constitution, almost everyone who is arrested has the right to be released on bail. The limited exceptions are people charged with capital murder and those accused of certain repeat felonies or bail violations. According to the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court, bail cannot be excessive, and pretrial detention largely should not be considered the default unless the defendant is a flight or safety risk, as criminal defendants are legally presumed innocent. Last week, lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the centerpiece of the broader bail package, Senate Joint Resolution 5, in addition to Senate Bill 9, ushering in a sweeping crack down on the state's bail system that Abbott had pursued across several sessions. SJR 5, if the Senate concurs on the House's version as expected, will ask voters in November to require judges to deny bail, in certain cases, for the most violent offenses. 'We've been working hard on this for a long time,' Abbott said to reporters on the House floor last week. 'Too many people have been murdered because of the broken bail system that we've had, and the members of the House stepped up and did what they needed to do for their constituents, which is to cast a vote that's going to save lives in their districts.' But on Wednesday, Democrats denied Abbott the full legislative package he'd pushed for by rejecting SJR 1 and Senate Joint Resolution 87, a last-minute proposal to automatically deny bail to anyone accused of certain felonies if they had previously been convicted of a felony or were out on bond at the time of the alleged offense. 'The House took meaningful steps to enact smart, evidence-based reforms that empower our justice system to keep communities safe, while successfully rejecting ugly, discriminatory bills that would have dragged Texas backwards,' Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston and chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement Wednesday. SJR 1 previously failed to top the 100-vote threshold last week and was repeatedly postponed until Wednesday, the last day the House could give final approval to any Senate proposals. Top lawmakers spent the week trying to cobble together an agreement that could win sufficient Democratic buy-in, but ultimately fell flat. Many Democrats said in the lead up to the Wednesday vote that there was no amendment that could overcome their apprehension about the legislation. 'To many members, no matter what the JR says, the rhetoric itself is toxic to the point that I don't know if there is a changing it to pass,' Moody told The Texas Tribune last week. 'The idea that the JR continues to foster the rhetoric that immigrants are here only to do violence or rape your wives and daughters,' he said, was preventing most Democrats from supporting the proposal. Last week, Moody had decried 'dehumanizing' and sometimes 'nakedly racist' language laced throughout political debates about immigration. Republican leaders framed the measure as a step to protect the public from dangerous unauthorized migrants, who they argued were a de facto flight risk given how they entered the country. 'We try to be a very generous country,' Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo and chair of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, said last week. 'But when you come into our country, and you harm our citizens, then we have an interest in making sure that we protect other citizens so that you don't harm them as well.' Democrats pointed to their overwhelming backing of SJR 5 as evidence of their commitment to public safety — an attempt, in part, to head off future political attacks for their rejection of SJR 1 and SJR 87. 'Democrats took a firm stand on public safety,' Moody told The Texas Tribune last week, calling SJR 5 the 'strongest constitutional amendment that's ever been proposed on bail denial.' 'It was done in a way that has legal process and due process for those that are accused,' he added. 'Democrats should be proud of their vote on that, and I think that's what they should go home and talk about — not respond to the rhetoric of fear.' Bail is a legal tool used around the country to incentivize people accused of a crime to appear at their court hearings. Defendants can pay the full bail amount, which is refundable if they go to all their hearings, or they can pay a nonrefundable partial deposit to a bail bond company that fronts the full amount. People who cannot afford to pay a deposit or their bail are often left detained for weeks or months, even though bail amounts are not meant to serve as a form of punishment. SJR 1 would have required judges to automatically deny bail and detain anyone 'not lawfully present in this country' who was accused of certain election felonies, drug-dealing crimes and the most serious violent felonies, including murder, sexual assault, human trafficking and aggravated robbery. The legislation defined a person 'not lawfully present' as any migrant who does not enter the United States through a port of entry, or who overstays a visa or other protected status. It considered U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and those granted asylum, refugee or military parole statuses to be 'lawfully present.' On Wednesday, in a last-ditch bid to win more Democratic votes, Smithee introduced an amendment to the resolution to also consider T and U status holders — who are victims of human trafficking and other crimes — and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients as lawful residents. The amendment also removed the term, 'illegal alien,' from the resolution. It was adopted 93 to 30. All other non-citizens would have been subject to automatic detention if a judge found probable cause that they committed one of the listed offenses. Republicans said the legislation would save lives by keeping dangerous defendants locked up. 'They're released out into the public, and those end up being the most dangerous people that we have out there,' Smithee said last week, evoking the murder of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Houstonian whose case became a national GOP talking point when the two men charged with her killing were found to have entered the United States illegally from Venezuela. (They were out on federal custody, not on bail, at the time of the crime.) 'We know that what we're doing now is not working,' he said. 'The human tragedy that has occurred because we've had this law school debate about rights — what about the rights of these victims? What about Jocelyn Nungaray? What were her rights?' Democrats in opposition to SJR 1 argued that it would unconstitutionally violate immigrant defendants' equal protection rights and undermine due process by barring judges from making individualized analyses of each case. And they argued that the magistrates responsible for bail do not have the training nor resources to determine defendants' immigration status. 'SJR 1 is unconstitutional, and it unfairly targets the immigrant community,' Wu said in a brief interview last week. Rep. Erin Gámez, D-Brownsville, added in an interview last week that the proposal would constitute 'an unfunded mandate on our already overcrowded jails. Border communities that are taking the brunt of this are receiving absolutely no extra compensation to handle this burden the rest of the state only talks about and doesn't see.' Adoption of SJR 5, some also argued, made SJR 1 unnecessary. 'If you think somebody's a flight risk, then fine,' Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, told Tribune last week, emphasizing that SJR 5 would already require judges to deny bail to defendants accused of the most violent crimes and who may be a flight or safety risk. 'But you shouldn't just make that determination based on somebody's immigration status.' Moody added that functionally, anyone who would have been subject to SJR 1 would already be detained by SJR 5 or by a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold. Unauthorized migrants accused of a crime and subject to an ICE detainer are required to be held for an additional 48 hours so that they can be transferred to federal custody. 'Our system deals with both dangerous people we need protection from and people who've simply made a mistake — and, unfortunately, those who are falsely accused,' Moody said in a statement Wednesday. 'The balance we struck on bail will treat each of them appropriately instead of sweeping all of them up together. This is a big win for all Texas communities.' First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
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3 days ago
- General
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Texas House set to vote on bail restrictions for people illegally in the country accused of violent crimes
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Senate Joint Resolution 1 — a proposed constitutional amendment to prevent bail for those not lawfully in the country accused of certain crimes — faces a crucial vote in the House on Wednesday, hours before a midnight deadline. Known as 'Jocelyn's Law', after 12-year-old Houston girl Jocelyn Nungaray was allegedly killed by a pair of men illegally in the country last year, SJR 1 is a priority of Gov. Greg Abbott. 'Illegal immigrants who are arrested should be considered a flight risk, denied bail and turned over to [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)],' Abbott said during his state of the state address in early February. While the Texas legislature has passed tangential laws designed to uphold Abbott's vision — such as Senate Bill 8 which requires local law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE on their 287(g) detention program — SJR 1 kept getting stalled in the Texas House. The proposed amendment took nearly three months to reach a House floor vote on May 19, passing to a third reading with an 88-50 vote. However, that's not enough for constitutional amendments which require a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of the legislature and a majority vote from the public. After failing to get the required 100 votes, SJR 1 was postponed. And postponed again. In total, it's been postponed seven times before Wednesday. It passed the Senate 28-2 all the way back on Feb. 19, but Senate Democrats had reservations about the bill. The senators worried about how broad the language is concerning the definition of 'illegal alien.' As it is written, Jocelyn's Law defines an illegal alien as anyone who entered the United States without inspection, or anyone who entered the country as a nonimmigrant and failed to maintain that status before they are accused of a crime. A nonimmigrant can be any foreign person allowed to enter the country for a certain amount of time and for a certain purpose, such as a student visa. The senators argue the language should be refined to 'ensure that those who may have initially entered the country without authorization but have since gone through the appropriate legal processes to gain lawful status are not impacted by this legislation.' SJR 1 is modeled off of the United States Congress' Laken Riley Act. It requires judges to deny bail for those defined as 'illegal aliens' if they're accused of committing one of these crimes: First-degree felony criminal solicitation Murder Capital murder Aggravated kidnapping Trafficking of persons Continuous trafficking of persons Indecency with a child Sexual assualt Aggravated sexual assault Felony injury to a child Aggravated robbery First-degree felony burglary with intent to: Continuous sexual abuse of a young child or disabled individual Indecency with a child Sexual assualt Aggravated sexual assault Prohibited sexual conduct Aggravated promotion of prostitution Compelling prostitution Possession or promotion of child pornography A felony where: A deadly weapon was used or brandished The accused was a party to the felony where a deadly weapon was used or brandished A felony under the election code An offense involving the manufacturing or delivery of a controlled substance with intent to delivery An offense involving the manufacturing, delivery or possession of a controlled substance in a drug-free zone, if the accused had already been convicted of committing a similar crime A judge or magistrate must deny bail if they determine there is probable cause the person engaged in the accused crime at a hearing. Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch is an immigration attorney and has been following SJR 1. She is concerned that local criminal courts will have to make decisions on someone's immigration status, a job she feels is better adjudicated in a federal court. 'Those are two independent systems and they should be independent because immigration is complicated and it's federal law,' Lincoln-Goldfinch said. 'I've represented people who've been accused of being terrorists just because they have tattoos. I've seen firsthand the way detention can be politicized. I, personally, do not trust the fact that that would not happen at the state level.' The House and Senate must pass all bills on third reading by midnight on Wednesday. Any bills not passed are considered 'dead.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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21-05-2025
- Politics
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Vote to automatically deny bail for accused felons in country illegally postponed
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — While the rest of Gov. Greg Abbott's bail reform package is on its way to becoming law, Senate Joint Resolution 1 is stuck in limbo. The proposal would prohibit bail options for those in the country illegally accused of certain violent or sexual felonies. As a proposed constitutional amendment, SJR 1 needs 100 votes in the Texas House to get sent to the ballots for voters to have the final say. On Monday, the second reading vote only mustered 88 votes, with two Democrats — State Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and State Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo — voting in favor. Two Republicans — Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, and State Rep. Richard Hayes, R-Lake Dallas — did not vote on the second reading, likely meaning the bill needs 10 more Democratic votes. Texas House prepares to vote on consumable hemp ban with exceptions for THC drinks With the third reading set for Tuesday morning, the bill's sponsor — State Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo — initially called for a delay until 3 p.m. Tuesday. Once his bill was called up again, he postponed it until 1 p.m. Wednesday. SJR 1 is unofficially known as 'Jocelyn's Law,' named after 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray who was killed in Houston last June. The two men charged with Nungaray's murder were Venezuelan nationals in the country illegally. Jocelyn's mother Alexis was invited to Abbott's State of the State address, where he declared bail reform an emergency item and said all 'illegal immigrants who are arrested should be considered a flight risk.' House supports Abbott's bail priorities—minus ban on bail for undocumented people However, the vast majority of Democratic lawmakers appeared to have problems with holding citizens and non-citizens to a different standard of the law. 'Crimes committed by an American citizen don't make that person any less dangerous,' State Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, said during the debate on Monday. 'You wanna get tough on crime? Let's deny all of them bail.' After the vote on Monday, Abbott was spotted on the Texas House floor. When Dallas Morning News' Phil Jankowski asked him about SJR 1, Abbott said, 'Well, there's still work to do.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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20-05-2025
- Politics
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Texas House advances bail reform package while immigration-related proposal faces challenges
The Texas House on Monday and Tuesday advanced a package of legislation that would significantly change the way bail is administered in the state — but one key part of the package hit a snag. The four pieces of legislation aim to make it easier to keep some defendants behind bars without bail as they await trial. Proponents say the bills will help keep Texans safe, citing instances in which defendants have allegedly committed violent crimes while out on bail for other charges. Opponents, however, have argued the bills are unjust and could further burden an already stressed pretrial system in Texas. Senate Joint Resolution 5, a proposed constitutional amendment to give judges and magistrates wider discretion to deny bail for suspects charged with certain violent crimes like murder, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and other serious offenses, easily advanced in the House on Monday. The Senate passed the legislation by a wide margin in February, and the House gave its nod to the resolution with a 133-8 vote. The Senate is expected to agree with House's changes to the resolution before Texas voters will have the opportunity to decide if it becomes law in a November election. The House added safeguards to the bill that were absent in the Senate version, including an elevated legal standard for denying bail and the right to counsel in bail-setting hearings. Another proposed constitutional amendment to keep defendants charged with a felony who are in the U.S. without legal authorization faced more scrutiny, however, and appeared to be on life support in the House on Tuesday afternoon. If approved by the Legislature and Texas voters, Senate Joint Resolution 1, or "Jocelyn's Law," would keep persons without authority to be in the U.S. who are charged with certain felonies in jail until trial, barring judges and magistrates from setting bail in those cases. The proposal is named for 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, whose body was found in June in a Houston bayou after being bound, sexually assaulted and strangled to death allegedly by two men believed to be in the U.S. illegally, according to authorities. More: Denying bail? Why a Texas Senate panel approved reform plan to keep some defendants in jail The Senate overwhelmingly passed the proposed constitutional amendment in February, but sponsors of the measure had not yet secured the constitutionally-required two-thirds majority of House members for the proposal to prevail by Tuesday afternoon. The lower chamber on Monday voted 88-50 to advance SJR 1 to a second vote, when it will require 100 supporters to head to Texas voters. Currently, judges may only deny bail under specific circumstances prescribed by the Texas Constitution's Bill of Rights. Houston Republican Sen. Joan Huffman, who authored the legislation, has said the current constitutional requirement to offer bail to some defendants, even if a judge might find them to be dangerous, is a massive public safety risk. Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, sponsored the bills in the House. He said during debate on SJR 1 that the bail reforms are a matter of life and death, calling the proposals some of the most important pieces of legislation he's voted on in his four decades in the House. "Had we passed this constitutional amendment six years ago, there would be little boys and girls still alive today who were tragically killed," Smithee said Monday. "I can promise you this: If we adopt this amendment and the voters approve it, it will save innocent human life. Period." While the bail reform proposals are generally noncontroversial among lawmakers, SJR 1 garnered some blowback from Democratic House members who said the measure is discriminatory and redundant with federal law, which requires the detention of non-U.S. nationals charged with certain crimes. Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, cast a "reluctant" yes vote on the resolution. He said the narrower House version of the proposal constitutes good public policy, but he warned of the dangers of the "ugly" rhetoric that often surrounds immigration issues. "From Twitter to town halls, the language around immigration is toxic, it's dehumanizing, and in some cases, it's nakedly racist," Moody said. "This type of scapegoating led to a mass murder in my hometown just a few years ago. Since then, that rhetoric has gotten worse, not better, and that makes it very hard to deal with just the policy on the paper." Others, like Edinburg Democratic Rep. Terry Canales, argued the bill unfairly targets immigrants when its provisions should apply to all allegedly dangerous criminals, regardless of immigration status. He urged his colleagues to "vote no on this piece of crap." Related legislation, Senate Bill 9 and SB 40, also passed the House on Tuesday. The Senate will need to approve the House's changes to those bills before they head to the governor's desk to become law. SB 9 is a comprehensive bail reform bill that would change several things about the bail system, including increasing the amount of information available to judges when setting bail. It would also require judges who do not deny bail for certain violent charges to provide a written statement on the reasoning for their decision. SB 40 would prevent public money from being transferred to charitable bail organizations like the Bail Project. Texas' top elected officials have called for lawmakers to fast-track bail reform legislation this session. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the three-term Republican who provides over the Senate, identified bail reform as one of his top legislative priorities, and Gov. Greg Abbott designated it an emergency item during his biennial State of the State address Feb. 2. Abbott has consistently voiced support for the measures on social media, firing off a spate of tweets in recent weeks urging lawmakers to vote in favor of the legislation. The governor made an impromptu visit to the House just as it was finishing up its daily floor session late Monday afternoon, ostensibly to shore up support for bail reform and other legislative priorities. Speaking briefly with reporters on the House floor, Abbott was clearly pleased with the passage of much of the bail reform package. "We've been working hard on this for a long time," the governor said after chatting informally with several House members. "Too many people have been murdered because of the broken bail system that we've had. "It needs to get done." Staff writer John C. Moritz contributed to this report. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas House OKs bail reform bills; immigration-related proposal stalls
