The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered another federal judge to consider a lawsuit against the O’Donnell Consent Decree, which requires misdemeanor suspects to be released without any bond being set.
The O’Donnell consent decree is the result of the Harris County Commissioners Court settling a 2016 lawsuit regarding bail practices, but has since been effectively overturned by a Fifth Circuit ruling in a virtually identical case out of Dallas County.
Attorney Jared Woodfill explained that the root issue in all of this was federal interference in the courts, which this will address. “In O’Donnell, you were having federal courts tell state courts what they could and could not do, based on interpretations of state law,” he explained.
He says now, more power will be given back to individual local criminal judges, who will now have the ability to set bond amounts and conditions in misdemeanor cases. Woodfill believes this will have major positive results for public safety. “You can just look at the statistics to see the impact that the O’Donnell case has had on crime in Harris County,” he said.