The Bail Post
What do we know about criminal justice reforms or bail reform? How do we evaluate whether reforms are helping or making the situation worse? How can we take politics out of criminal justice and focus on public safety? The Bail Post seeks to be a place where legislators and the public can educate themselves on a host of criminal justice/bail reform issues. With various attempts at criminal justice reform from New York to Texas to California, many people are confused as to what is working and what is not. With the passage of time, more and more data is coming to light over what successful reform looks like and what reforms have been found to not be working. The rise in violent crime across the country has been startling and law makers and the public alike are desperate to find legislation that is effective. Some might ask whether some of the reforms making the situation worse? The Bail Post is an on-going discussion that seeks to cut to the core to provide education on the various issues raised and to highlight what successful criminal justice reform looks like and what measures have been disastrous. Join us and educate yourself about the best practices that jurisdictions must implement to keep their communities safe, while ensuring fairness to defendants. As a someone said recently "Public safety is the foundation of a society. Without public safety we do not have a society."
If you would like to listen other episodes of The Bail Post you can find a subject matter index of the different episodes at- https://pbtx.blogspot.com/p/subject-index-to-bail-post-podcasts.html.
The host is Ken W. Good; an attorney in Tyler, Texas who has been licensed for over 30 years. He has argued cases before the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Mr. Good has written a book on bail called "Goods On Bail." He has also has had numerous papers published on Criminal Justice Reform issues. Mr. Good is a board member of PBT and serves on the legislative committee. Mr. Good is married and has two daughters.
The Bail Post
Episode No. 7- Honoring the Victims of Bad Bail Reform- Rosalie Cook and Summer Chester
The Bail Post and the Houston Crime Stoppers join together to tell the stories of just some of the victims of Bad Bail Reform. In this episode, we honor the heart breaking story of Rosalie Cook, an 80 year old grandma who went to Walgreens to buy a birthday card. But she never got the birthday card because she was killed by a defendant who was 38 years old at the time. He had been arrested over 70 times and convicted over 60 times. He was released from jail on 2 felony PR (free) bonds. He walked away from his half-way house and no one reported it to the court in the ensuing weeks. He approached Ms. Cook in the parking lot of Walgreens attempting to rob her and steal her car. He ended up killing Mr. Cook in the parking lot.
We also honor Summer Chester who was a college student who was working her way through college when she was brutally run over as she was walking through an intersection by someone who should have never been released from jail in the first place. The defendant had been arrested for capital murder for a home invasion where he killed the homeowner in his sleep and killed another person fleeing. Instead, of denying bond as authorized by the Texas Constiution, the court set the defendant's bond at $250,000.00. Then the defendant was accused of a new crime in the county jail and was charged with a new offense that was a felony. Also, the defendant had over 90 pages of incidents documented while he was in jail. When the defendant could not post a bond, the defendant asked the court to lower the bond and the trial court agreed to lower the bond to $50,000.00. But for the trial court's actions Ms. Chester would be alive today.
To learn more about Houston Crime Stoppers visit their website- https://crime-stoppers.org/. You can also visit them on-
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/CrimeStoppersOfHouston
Twitter- https://twitter.com/CrimeStopHOU