Harris County Republicans, winless in countywide judicial races over the last three elections, are aiming to unseat dozens of Democratic judges in the November midterms as they look to capitalize on the county’s high rates of violent crime.
Judicial candidates from both parties traditionally have little control over their fates at the ballot box, with a single party capturing every countywide judicial contest in Harris County in five of the last seven election cycles. That trend has deterred many would-be Republican candidates from even bothering to run in recent years, leaving a number of Democratic judges uncontested as Harris County solidified its leftward lean.
Democratic judges and their supporters argue the Texas Constitution sets firm restrictions on when judges can deny bail outright, while also limiting the amount of bail they can set for various cases. “Our Democratic judges do a great job of following the Constitution as written,” said Odus Evbagharu, the Harris County Democratic Party chair. “They are only bound by the laws that are written by the state Legislature and the Republican leadership that’s in Austin. All Republicans have done is, they're trying to score cheap political points off of people's pain, off of murder, domestic violence, things like that, instead of rolling up their sleeves and actually getting to work.
Critics argue that judges can work within the confines of the law and still ensure more defendants accused of multiple violent felonies are kept behind bars until their trials. They note that judges have granted bail to defendants accused of capital murder in some cases or lowered the initial bail amounts set by magistrate judges at probable cause hearings — in some cases leading to the release of defendants who went on to commit other offenses.
Kevin Buckler, a criminal justice professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, said Texas district judges generally have"pretty wide discretion" in setting bail amounts for felony charges — unlike misdemeanor judges in Harris County, who are bound by the county's 2019 misdemeanor bail reform settlement, which requires cash-free releases for most poor misdemeanor defendants.
Most of the judicial contests in Harris County involve positions that have nothing to do with the high-level criminal charges at issue in the bail dispute. Aside from the criminal courts, Harris County voters will pick judges for 24 state district courts that handle civil, family and juvenile law matters, including disputes involving small amounts of money, divorce and land titles.
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