JEFFERSON CITY • Thursday was Notorious RBG Day in the Missouri Capitol.
There, in a basement hearing room, lawmakers of both parties were celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court decision that came down the day before, the decision written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and unanimously agreed to by the court, the decision signed by Justices Roberts, Gorsuch, Thomas and Kavanaugh, the decision that could change the criminal justice system in Missouri and every other state forever.
State Rep. Shamed Dogan, R-Ballwin, was almost giddy as he described the court’s decision to apply the excessive fines clause in the Eighth Amendment to states and local governments. Dogan leads the House Special Committee on Criminal Justice, and it has been hearing a series of bills that deal with what he calls “policing for profit.”
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On this morning, the committee passed Dogan’s bill that deals with the underlying issue in the previous day’s court decision, asset forfeiture. In that case, Timbs v. the State of Indiana, police had seized the $42,000 Land Rover SUV of small-time heroin user and dealer Tyson Timbs. The car is worth more than four times the maximum fine for Timbs’ conviction of selling a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of heroin. The Indiana Supreme Court had ruled the seizure was acceptable because the Eighth Amendment didn’t apply to states.
Now it does. And that puts the wind behind the back of the bills making their way through Dogan’s committee. His bill would stop the practice in Missouri of state police agencies’ avoiding state jurisdiction by seeking asset forfeiture under guise of federal law, and keeping any seizures made in drug cases.
Under Dogan’s bill, which passed unanimously, such forfeitures would be done under the color of state law, and any money or assets taken would go to the state, reducing the profit motive of individual police agencies.
Next up was state Rep. Justin Hill’s bill, which would reduce the incentive for private probation companies to drug test defendants charged with misdemeanors that have nothing to do with alcohol or drugs.
“There is an incentive to keep (defendants) in the system so (the private probation companies) can keep getting monthly fees,” Hill said.
Indeed, testified Michael Barrett, head of the Missouri State Public Defender’s office, all of these elements of policing for profit work together to harm the criminal justice system and keep poor people buried in deep poverty.
There are more than 14 pages of various fees, fines and court costs outlined in Missouri law, Barrett said. The most punitive is often the jail board bill that most rural counties charge. Barrett recounted the story of Cory Booth of Caldwell County. When he was 17, Booth stole a lawnmower. He was jailed. He ended up supervised by a private probation company, which said he violated his probation because of drug use. He spent more time in jail and got an even bigger bill he couldn’t afford. More than 11 years later, he’s still paying, still poor, still tied to the court system that calls him back month after month simply because he owes room and board for his involuntary incarceration.
“Too often, these fines and fees keep (defendants) in the criminal justice system long after their time has been served,” Barrett said.
He told Dogan’s committee that the Supreme Court ruling in the excessive fines case had “given more teeth” to the cause of criminal justice reform.
Joanna Weiss agrees. The co-director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center said that the decision should signal to policy makers that if they didn’t act, expensive litigation would be on the way.
“This should put pressure on policy makers to make change now,” Weiss said in an interview, “because we know the excessive fines clause applies to states.”
Last month, Weiss’ organization was one of several to file an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit filed by Barrett’s office that says the process by which jail board bills are collected in Missouri is illegal. The brief went further than some others in the case, suggesting that the entire board bill scheme is unconstitutional, applying the same excessive fees clause to the issue at the center of Ginsburg’s opinion in the Indiana case.
“The imposition of jail board bills on indigent defendants is … excessive, plainly counterproductive, and likely unconstitutional,” the brief argues.
Soon, the Missouri House will decide if it agrees. A bill that eliminates jail time as a penalty for failure to pay a board bill could head to the House floor as soon as next week.
Speaker Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield, says he backs the bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce DeGroot, R-Chesterfield, and Rep. Mark Ellebracht, D-Liberty:
“I am extremely supportive of the efforts to improve our criminal justice system, which is why I emphasized the need for reform in my opening day address, created a special committee to study the issue, and worked to make sentencing reform legislation one of the first bills out of the House this session,” Haahr said. “Rep. DeGroot’s bill is an important part of our efforts to make our justice system fairer and more accountable.”
It is a view that mirrors that of the U.S. Supreme Court.
“In short, the historical and logical case for concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Excessive Fines Clause is overwhelming,” Ginsburg wrote for the unanimous court. “Protection against excessive punitive economic sanctions secured by the Clause is, to repeat, both ‘fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty’ and ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’”
Jailed for being poor is Missouri epidemic: A series of columns from Tony Messenger
Tony Messenger has written about Missouri cases where people were charged for their time in jail or on probation, then owe more money than their fines or court costs.
The Pulitzer Prize board considered these columns when it decided to award the prize for commentary to metro columnist Tony Messenger.
In a twist of irony, one judge no longer calls them “payment review hearings.” Instead, he’s even more direct. Now they are called “debt colle…
“The jail is emptying out. People that do come in are able to bond out quickly. None of the girls here are being held for financial reasons. T…
In a case of civil contempt — such as when a judge jails a reporter for not revealing a source, or an attorney for failing to follow an order …
Even with the state’s top court making progress in eradicating the practice of putting people in jail because they can’t afford to be in jail,…
“There are a pile of cases where people owe us money,” the judge told the defendant, a painter, who said he was having a hard time finding wor…
No longer, the court said in one voice, can judges in Missouri threaten indigent defendants with jail time for their inability to be able to a…
Disparate treatment of people charged with crimes offers a glimpse into a fundamental problem in the application of criminal justice in Missou…
Weiss wants the Legislature to make it illegal for counties to charge defendants for their time behind bars.
“How can they cancel a court date then issue a warrant without even telling you the new court date?” Sharp wonders.
His bill would stop the practice in Missouri of state police agencies avoiding state jurisdiction by seeking asset forfeiture under guise of f…
"He sat in jail because he was poor," public defender Matthew Mueller said of his client.
The two defendants are Exhibits A and B of why Missouri has become the front line in a national war on poverty and the courts.
She knows what she did was wrong. She knows she should have been punished.
“It's been a hard road,” she told me recently. “Really hard.”
For decades, Missouri’s corrections budget has been rising. So has its prison population, with a “tough on crime” philosophy filling prisons w…
“We’re hamstringing the very people who we want to go out and get a job,” Lummus says. “It’s self-defeating.”
In his regular appearance on the McGraw Milhaven show on KTRS radio, Metro columnist Tony Messenger discusses his ongoing debtors' prison series.
He did his time. Then he got the bill: $3,150 for his stay behind bars.
A year-end update on some of the cases Tony Messenger wrote about during 2018.
The primary difference between the poor people who have been “terrorized” in Edmundson or Jennings or Ferguson, compared with those in Salem a…
The Court of Appeals in the Western District of Missouri determined that the practice of using the courts to try to collect board bills is ill…
Some counties in Missouri don't charge board bills. Those include the most urban counties in the state: both the city and county of St. Louis,…
I did my time and then some. This is how they get people. They keep them on probation and then if they don't pay their board bill they violate…
By 2009, Rapp was behind in her payments and the court revoked her probation. She did a couple of days in jail and her cash bond of $400 was a…
Every week in Missouri, a judge somewhere holds a crowded docket to collect room and board from people who were recently in jail. The judges c…
“I don’t see why he has to keep going to court every month,” she says. Sharon uses her Social Security income to try to keep him out of jail. …
Because Precious Jones was late to jail, prosecutor and judge seek to add to her sentence.
The Missouri Supreme Court and Missouri Legislature should revisit their 2015 and 2016 efforts to reform courts. More work is necessary.
Other than now being required to meet federal standards for that drug testing, private probation companies face nearly no oversight in Missour…
“I messed up on probation,” he says. “It was my fault.” Still, he doesn’t think it makes sense that he’s still hauled to court once a month wi…
Murr owed Dent County about $4,000 for her “board bill” for the 95 days she had been jailed.
The domestic violence victim, Gaddis says, wouldn’t make a report to police because she feared going to jail herself and losing her child.
“They make you jump through hoops,” Bote says, “and then they keep moving the hoops higher.”
William Everts stole from a church. Almost immediately, he knew it was a bad idea.
Bergen has the sort of back story that would inspire one of the movies or television episodes based in the Ozarks that seem to be all the rage…
Clark ended up spending 495 days in county jail awaiting a trial that still hasn’t come.
Pritchett first called me last year, after I wrote about a St. Francois County woman who was sent to prison for failing to pay court costs. He…
Rob Hopple had been in jail since May after falling behind on payments on an ankle bracelet. Court dates kept coming and going, with the prose…
The bills are that high because the two criminal defendants couldn’t afford to pay for an initial sentence behind bars for relatively minor of…
“The practical reality is that people are being arrested for being poor,” Mueller says. “And there’s nothing they can do about it. They just s…
At least twice in recent years, the Missouri Supreme Court has overturned harsh sentences issued by a judge after she sent people to prison so…
Branson, in early 2018, was in Desloge, Mo., now, living with her 15-year-old son, checking in with her parole officer, hoping never to go bac…
Officially, Victoria Branson’s probation was revoked because she never paid the state the past due support and the court costs, which rang up …