Published: Monday, December 06, 2010, 5:28 AM
MOBILE, Ala. -- Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran says he's working on a way to help keep suspects from repeatedly making bail, leaving jail and committing more crimes.
Under Cochran's system, prosecutors or police would receive notice if certain suspects were booked into jail again. That way, they could flag them and possibly keep them from being released on yet another bail.
That system, though, would require the prosecutors or officers to make a specific arrest or bring the suspect before a judge.
"I don't think someone who is out on one bond should be able to just come in and be admitted to another bond," Cochran said. "They're just essentially buying their way out of jail and buying their way out of trouble until ultimately there's a day of reckoning in court."
The Press-Register reported last month that a 20-year-old man accused in the high-profile robbery and slaying of Christopher Kyser Miree was arrested and released on bail multiple times in the weeks before and after the crime.
Michael Jerome Lee had posted bail on three felony drug charges and a menacing charge, and at one point skipped a bail hearing, before he was arrested in July and charged with capital murder in Miree's death.
The Mobile County Metro Jail handles roughly 27,000 bookings each year. For more-serious offenses, such as murder or first-degree robbery, a defendant must see a judge to get bail. But under a practice designed to ease overcrowding, a system of preset bails allows some defendants to quickly gain release with no formal hearing in District Court.
Cochran said last week that he wasn't ready to release details of how his notification system would work, but he expected it to be fully developed in another month.
He said that a prosecutor, judge or law officer could ask the jail to provide notice if particular defendants who are already out on bail are arrested again. The notice, he said, would be automatic and immediate.
The jail has the legal authority to hold someone for up to 72 hours at the request of a prosecutor or top law officer, he said.
Mobile's jail, like many others across the U.S., is overcrowded. On any day, the jail holds 1,300 to 1,500 inmates, although it was designed for about 1,160.
The Sheriff's Office expects it will have handled about 27,000 bookings by the end of the year.
Even with jail congestion, Cochran said he would be open to requiring defendants to see a judge if they're arrested on a new felony while out on bail.
Some corrections analysts say that a model bail system shouldn't involve money at all.
Cherise Fanno Burdeen, chief operating officer of the Pretrial Justice Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, said that under the best systems, everyone who is booked into jail, regardless of the offense, must appear before a magistrate or judge before being released.
Rather than focus only on the criminal charge and a dollar amount, defendants are evaluated for their potential risk to skip out on court or pose a further danger to the public. The evaluations are standardized, and defendants are given a score.
Some who are accused of minor offenses are simply released on their own recognizance. Others who obtain release may undergo special supervision, such as electronic monitoring, drug tests, or weekly or daily reporting to the courts. Some others remain in jail.
Even though the model system requires defendants to stay in jail for a day or two, Burdeen said, "that's an important 24- or 48-hour period."
In Mobile County, judges can refer defendants who can't make bail to Mobile Community Corrections Center's pretrial services program, allowing them to be released to electronic monitoring or other supervision. It's apparently not a widely used program. Last year, 271 defendants were released to pretrial services.
An example of a city with a different system from Mobile is Memphis.
In Memphis, Assistant District Attorney General Thomas Henderson said that judicial commissioners - essentially assistants to the judges who set bail in Shelby County, Tenn. - work in the jail intake area 24 hours each day. Police officers can tell the commissioners about the case, and the commissioners can research a defendant's background before setting a bail.
If there isn't enough background, or a defendant is charged with a serious felony, Henderson said, the commissioners can decline to set bail until the defendant goes before a judge at a formal hearing, typically held within 24 hours.
"There needs to be somebody to look into their background in every case," Henderson said.
He said there are about 100,000 arrests on misdemeanors and felonies there each year, and eight general sessions judges handle bail hearings.
If someone who is out on bail on a felony charge is arrested on a new felony charge, he said, bail is automatically double the normal amount.
In Alabama, Madison County District Attorney Robert Broussard noted that there's no clear-cut way to predict a suspect's behavior. Nor is it possible, he said, to lock up each and every suspect for crimes for which they are presumed innocent.
Broussard was in the Mobile area recently and read the Press-Register's account of the numerous releases of the accused shooter in the Miree case.
"It would be untruthful for me to tell you that something like that could never happen in Madison County," he said.
He explained, "There is inherently a risk in this business, and there's no getting around it."
He said that prosecutors in his Huntsville office try to file motions to revoke bonds in cases of repeated arrests, but "as a practical matter, with the realities of the overcrowding of the system, chances are really good, on your run-of-the-mill charges, they're not going to be revoked."
Mobile County Presiding Circuit Judge Charles Graddick, a former Mobile County prosecutor and Alabama attorney general, said that with increased competition, bonding companies have undercut prices from the traditional 10 percent fee, making it easy for defendants to gain release, regardless of the dollar amount.
Some bonding companies have offered payment plans on bail amounts, extending lines of credit and setting percentage fees in the single digits.
"If we set a high bond, they're going to find a bonding company that's going to make that bond," Graddick said.
