Does anyone else have a problem getting their JP's to place conditions on bonds?

Do JPs in your jurisdictions place conditions on bonds?

I am having a hard time getting my JPs to place simple conditions (ie, commit no offense, etc.) on bonds. Therefore, I often have people that commit two or three felonies before I can get them indicted.

In order to centralize the filing of criminal cases and provide more consistency in bonding and conditions imposed on felons, we changed to a direct file system in Williamson County. That now means that all felony criminal charges are filed directly into a district court (clerk assigns the case to one of the three district courts handling criminal matters). That way, a district judge has immediate control over the case, even before indictment.

That would be one solution to your problem with JP's (often nonlawyers) having control over a felony case before indictment. If you want more details, contact our first assistant Jana McCown. She also wrote an article for The Prosecutor on the subject that was published recently. Should be able to find it in the archives of this website.

The JP's may not be the right magistrate in your county to impose the bond conditions. If it is just a matter of them issueing the warrant after signing off on probable cause, that's what Williamson county does. It doesn't really accomplish much to have the conditions imposed before the defendant is ever arrested, anyway.

The best place to have bond conditions imposed is by the magistrate who sees the defendant once he's been arrested. That way the defendant can be given notice about the conditions when they are imposed. Our magistrates regularly imposed DWI conditions or no contact/protective order type conditions even before our direct filing system went into place. If your magistrate works at the discretion of the judges, you might start with persuading your judges that there are some standard conditions that should be imposed in every case or specific kinds of cases. Do the work for them and come up with the standard list for their approval.

I have a multi-county jursidiction with one district judge (and only one judge attorney in the district).

The JPs magistrate everyone after arrest. I created a short, one page checklist that the JPs can fill out at the time of magistration. They used the form maybe a handful of times but have sinced refused to place conditions on the bonds.

That is a shame. Any magistrate should be willing to impose a condition that the defendant not commit a new crime. And that is the only way to go if you want to ask a judge to deny bond following such a violation of the conditions. Perhaps you will have to pick a good example and use the media to inform the public of the problem. There is nothing wrong with holding an elected judge accountable for failing to protect the public with simple bond conditions.