HOUSTON (CN) — In the latest of three federal class actions challenging a post-arrest regime that effectively warehouses poor people in Texas’s most crowded jail, two men claim Harris County unconstitutionally jailed them with “unsworn” arrest reports.
Lead plaintiff Lucas Lomas, 26, was arrested without a warrant on felony theft charges and booked into Harris County Jail in downtown Houston on Christmas Eve.
Most arrests are made without warrants because police can detain and arrest people they see commit a crime or have probable cause to believe they did.
Lomas was charged with stealing five DVDs and a speaker, valued at less than $2,500. By itself the alleged crime would be a misdemeanor, but prosecutors charged Lomas with a felony due to two previous theft convictions, court records show.
On Christmas Day, a magistrate judge, or hearing officer, found probable cause to detain Lomas and set his bail at $15,000. Unable to post bail, he is in jail awaiting his Jan. 3, 2017 arraignment.
“The hearing officer’s finding of probable cause was made on the basis of unsworn statements,” Lomas says in the complaint.
Represented by the Texas Fair Defense Project in Austin, Lomas says Harris County habitually detains people who can’t afford bail based on unsworn criminal complaints, which “are not signed under penalty of perjury,” a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Here’s how it works: An officer makes a warrantless arrest then calls a hotline staffed 24/7 by a Harris County assistant district attorney.
“The arresting officer describes the circumstances leading to arrest, and the assistant district attorney on duty decides what, if any, charges are supported by those circumstances. The statements an officer makes to the ADA on duty are not sworn,” the complaint states.
If the prosecutor believes charges are appropriate, he or she “accepts” them and tells the officer the bail amount according to a preset payment schedule.
“After the ADA accepts the charges, the police officer types a summary of the facts and a description of the accepted charges into a District Attorney’s Intake Management System (DIMS) terminal,” the lawsuit states.
“Most police officers in Harris County have access to such a terminal in their squad cars; all officers can access them at stationhouses. The DIMS summary is not sworn.”
Shortly after their arrest, defendants are taken in groups of 25 to 40 to a room in the jail where they appear via video before a magistrate and prosecutor.
These “rote” hearings last a minute, during which defendants are advised by magistrates and sheriff’s deputies not to ask for lower bail, or say anything, and are not afforded a lawyer, according to the new complaint and a related federal class action filed in May.
“The statements the ADA reads, and on the basis of which hearing officers find probable cause in almost every case, are not supported by oath or affirmation. In other words, they are not signed under penalty of perjury. They are not sworn,” Lomas says in his complaint.
Harris County assistant attorney Robert Soard said the county is reviewing the lawsuit’s allegations.