Municipal courts punish poor, legal experts say

The practice by Texas municipal courts, including in El Paso, of jailing people because they can’t afford to pay traffic fines may be against state law and the Constitution, according to legal experts and the Supreme Court.

The allegations are receiving national attention after BuzzFeed published an investigative story Wednesday titled “Their Crime: Being Poor, Their Sentence: Jail.” The report mentions El Paso.

For the investigative story, BuzzFeed reporters also interviewed presiding El Paso Municipal Court Judge Daniel Robledo and prominent El Paso lawyer Fernando Chacon. The story may be viewed at http://bzfd.it/1Pkk0HM

Chacon told the El Paso Times, “This is happening because cities are under pressure to come up with revenues, and assessing fines is a business.

“The second reason that this may happen is because the system hates poor people. Municipal courts are willing to put people in jail just to punish people for being poor,” Chacon said.

Calls to Robledo and the municipal courts were referred Thursday to the city’s legal department.

City spokesman Ramon Herrera said the city staff cannot speak for the judges.

“It’s outrageous to put people in jail because they can’t pay a fine,” said Rebecca Bernhardt, executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, an advocacy organization based in Austin. “It’s costly on the system, on a community and on families. It’s illegal, irrational and plain mean. It’s illegal under Texas law, and the constitution prohibits jailing people for civil debt.”

Under Texas law, she said, judges are required to assess a person’s financial situation before deciding to send them to jail. If they don’t have the money to pay the fine, the judge may offer the option of community service.

The BuzzFeed story alleged that El Paso judges apparently did not conduct poverty assessment hearings in 100 cases from 2014 that the news organization reviewed and that resulted in jail sentences.

Texas Fair Defense Project is devoted to improving the fairness of Texas’ criminal courts and ensuring that all Texans have access to justice.

“I thought the city had stopped doing this, and I may have to sue the city again to put a stop to this practice, which is unconstitutional,” said Chacon, who filed a lawsuit against the city of El Paso about 15 years ago after encountering people who faced jail because they couldn’t afford to pay traffic tickets.

BuzzFeed recounted the Juana Hidrogo case that prompted Chacon to sue the city after he had filed emergency petitions to get several clients released. Hidrogo, Chacon said, was arrested despite the fact that she had a 4-year-old child in the hospital undergoing treatment for cancer. The case was resolved in her favor.

El Paso singled out

Periodically, authorities conduct “warrant roundups” across El Paso to arrest people with outstanding warrants that are issued after people fail to show up for traffic court or fail to pay their fines or finish community service.

Prior to the roundups, which can occur at a person’s home or workplace, authorities publish the names of people with outstanding warrants in an effort to get them to pay their fines.

El Paso lawyer Ouisa Davis, a former associate municipal court judge, said she served on the bench before the city developed a payment system and witnessed cases like the one that Chacon recalled.

“We would see single mothers get arrested and lose their jobs because they were jailed, and then Child Protective Services would pick up their children and put them in foster care while they were incarcerated, all because they could not afford to pay the fines,” Davis said.

David represented a senior citizen this week on a traffic matter because the client needed help.

“Many people don’t know when they receive a ticket that they have to respond, they have to do something, send a fine, report to the court at a specific location, and then they face the possibility of being arrested,” Davis said.

The state of Texas publishes municipal court statistics at txcourts.gov. According to statistics for El Paso on the website, and reported by BuzzFeed, El Paso courts issued 87,000 warrants in 2014 “for people who failed to show up in court for these cases, fell behind on fine payment plans, or didn’t complete community service.”

The city’s Municipal Court website, elpasotexas.gov/municipal-courts, includes a link to search whether someone has an outstanding warrant, the amount of the fine, and the payment system available.

Tough on low-income people

Court dockets for each municipal court and jail court are also on the website. Some of the outstanding warrants include citations for residents of other states and Juárez.

“The payment system is punitive because it assesses extra costs to pay a fine in installments,” Chacon said. “And in El Paso, you actually need a car to drive to and from work.”

Davis said the fines pile up because a motorist who is pulled over might get cited for several infractions: no insurance, expired sticker and license, improper registration and so forth.

She said people with traffic tickets are not entitled to free legal representation. In Texas, that opportunity kicks in when someone is facing at least six months in jail. The rest are on their own.

Rebecca Bernhardt, executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, a legal advocacy group, said there’s no study she knows of in Texas that shows whether the current system is cost-effective for communities.

For example, “El Paso spends about $375,000 a year to jail people for unpaid fines,” BuzzFeed reported, and the city collected about $11 million in traffic and other minor-offense fines in the past year, which was about 4 percent of the city’s general revenue fund budget.

Chacon said El Paso’s municipal court judges need to discuss what approach they are going to take to address the issue of jailing people who can’t afford to pay fines. “They are supposed to consider whether someone is indigent before handing out the punishment,” Chacon said. “They were doing this for a while and must have stopped. I will sue again if it’s necessary.”

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at 546-6140; dvaldez@elpasotimes; @eptimesdiana on Twitter.