We recently posted a piece about how local Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston) has once again lobbied the Texas Legislature during its 2025 session to gut the Michael Morton Act—a 2013 act designed to prevent wrongful convictions—in a manner that would resurrect the kind of prosecutorial misconduct that made Texas one of the nation’s leaders in wrongful convictions secured through such misconduct.
Not satisfied with this draconian law-and-order effort (a pro-victim/prosecution effort as she would call it), Huffman has joined forces with Gov. Gregg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and a cadre of her like-minded Republican colleagues to restrict bail constitutionally.
At the opening of the 2025 Legislative session earlier this year, Abbott used his State of State Address to inform the legislature (58 percent of whom are Republicans) that his continued political assault on the constitutional right to bail would be an “emergency item” for lawmakers.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick promptly hand-picked Sen. Huffman to lead the governor’s latest assault on bail. Sen. Huffman, who politically dislikes bail almost as much as the Morton Act, quickly got the Republican-controlled Senate to pass Senate Bill 9 (SB 9) and Senate Joint Resolution 5 (SJR 5) that would amend the Texas Constitution to allow judges to deny bail to defendants charged with violent crimes such as murder, aggravating kidnapping, and assault with a deadly weapon.
In addition, SB 9 would include restrictions on bail for repeat offenders, limit personal recognizance bonds, and increase oversight of charitable bail organizations that help indigent defendants secure bail release.
Since SB 9 and SJR 15 require the approval of two-thirds of the House lawmakers (100 of the 150 members), and since Democrats are needed to pass the measures, and are not in a current political mood to cooperate with Gov. Abbott after he ramrod the school voucher program past them, Huffman and Patrick may not have the political wherewithal to get the governor’s emergency item over the finish line.
According to an April 25, 2025, report in the Texas Observer, the current political issue fueling these latest Republican-driven efforts to restrict bail constitutionally is the 2022 shooting death of Harris County Omar Ursin by two men who were out on bail for prior murders.
In a recent post, Abbott put on the social media platform X, the governor had this to say about his and Huffman’s efforts to constitutionally restrict bail because of the Ursin shooting death:
“We will put an end to easy bail policies that let dangerous criminals back on our streets. It’s time to protect our communities and keep criminals behind bars.”
The Texas Commission Jail Standards reports that roughly 77,000 people are housed in state jails on any given day. Sheriffs in virtually every county, rural and urban, are dealing with the interrelated crises of overcrowding and staff shortages.
The Texas Jail Project reports, according to the Observer, that these crises resulted in 135 deaths in county jails in 2024 alone, most of whom were presumed innocent defendants charged with non-violent offenses but who lacked the financial means to secure release through the state’s cash bail system.
The problem inherent in Huffman’s efforts to constitutionally restrict bail is that she continuously misrepresents or uses misinformation.
For example, this past February Houston Landing reported that Huffman filed a bill, Senate Bill 40 (SB 40), that passed in the Senate and is currently pending in the House that would stop political subdivisions from sending public funds to nonprofits to pay the bail fees for criminal defendants.
Huffman made a big deal about the legislation, saying she introduced SB 40 because her office had discovered that Harris County had made 311 individual payments to one such nonprofit. She accused the county of “bailing out criminals” with taxpayer money at the expense of victims and public safety.
That simply was not true.
The senator shot off her mouth without having the facts, much like she often did as a felony prosecutor. The County and The Bail Project, the nonprofit referenced by Huffman, clarified the public record, informing Huffman that the $2.1 million in the “individual payments” were “refunds,” not bail payments.
The Houston Landing explained Huffman’s lack of understanding about the Texas bail system this way:
“Bail is a longtime legal practice that uses a cash payment to ensure defendants charged with a crime show up for court proceedings.
“The bail amount is set by a judge, and allows a defendant to avoid jail before trial, which can enable the individual to assist with their defense and continue working to support themselves or family.
“An individual who is unable to pay the full amount can pay a percentage of the bail – typically 10 percent – to purchase a bond from a bail bond agency. That bond is then used to pay the bail.
“If a defendant does not show up for court dates, the bail is forfeited and the defendant can be arrested and jailed.
“If a defendant shows up for his or her court proceedings, the bail is refunded to whoever paid it.
“The payments by the Harris County Auditor’s Office to The Bail Project were simply refunds for defendants the nonprofit bailed out who went on to appear at all of their court dates, the same as if the defendants had paid the bail themselves and were refunded, said Natalie Michailides, executive director of Harris County Pretrial Services.
“‘ No taxpayer dollars were used to compensate any organization for services to pay the bail for a person accused of a crime,’ Michailides said.
“The Bail Project stopped its bail assistance program in Texas in 2023, instead focusing on policy advocacy, said Emma Stammen, a policy strategist for the California-based nonprofit.
“Refund payments that have recently been sent by the county to The Bail Project are from the resolution of cases that date back to prior to the nonprofit ceasing its operations in Texas, Stammen said.
“The Bail Project paid the bail of 1,400 defendants in Texas, including Harris County, from Oct. 2020 until ceasing operations in June 2023, she said.
“” It could just be a misunderstanding of how bail works in Texas and the refund process, but also Sen. Huffman has been vocally antagonistic to bail funds in the past, as evidenced by the way they were talking about us in the hearing,” Stammen said. ‘I also think it’s a distraction from the important work that bail funds are doing in Texas.'”
These kinds of misrepresentations by Huffman reflect Lt. Gov. Patrick’s political pledge to “play hardball” in support of Gov. Abbott’s determination to constitutionally restrict bail access—a determination the governor recently expressed in a speech to the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare sees the political push to constitutionally restrict bail for a large group of defendants through a different constitutional lens. The Observer pointed to a letter Teare sent to Sen. Huffman informing her that while he supports judges having the authority to deny bail to certain violent offenders, her legislative efforts lack appropriate risk assessment tools to determine who those offenders are.
“When it comes to Texas bail laws, the criminal justice system must find an effective way to distinguish individuals who pose a real, immediate threat to community safety and those who do not,” Teare told Huffman.
We agree.
The Abbott, Patrick, and Huffman political coalition to constitutionally restrict bail under the guise of victim and public safety is nothing more than political grandstanding—material for future political campaigns. It is part of a long-term political strategy to use fear-mongering as a racial dog whistle to gin up the political base of the Republican party, a remnant of the trusty old “southern strategy” that has been reliably used to appeal to disaffected white Southerners since the Nixon administration.
Hopefully, their efforts will die in the Texas House.
