Episode No. 76- Tennessee's Proposed Constitutional Amendment to Extend Preventative Detention

Shelley, what is the problem that the legislature is trying to address, do you think, in this constitutional amendment? I mean, what was what was it? What's the issue that they're saying needs to be addressed?

It's sort of started when they passed a bill that our community.

bail groups could only post one per defendant three times a year.

And that was their first means of trying to use and adapt pretrial detention.

And so it's kind of just escalated from there.

Well, I look at this and

go, their bail reform has been very similar to Texas to strengthen the criminal justice system, not to weaken it.

So I would argue that their attempt at reform of charitable bail organizations is stronger than Texas.

And they're ruling their bill that says you can't consider ability to pay as an element of setting bail, which it sounds like you've already mentioned that that was done in response to Shelby County.

But that was upheld by the federal court that looked at that issue.

I mean, I spent a lot of time yesterday looking at that federal lawsuit, and so I thought it was interesting because it's similar, again, to the O'Donnell case in Harris County.

The court addressed the issue of younger abstention, and the Fifth Circuit has eventually ruled that the federal court should abstain and not address these issues.

But the federal court, even in that state court case, said that it should not abstain, but it ultimately ruled that the group suing didn't have standing.

And that they were trying to extend a constitutional right from another issue that had never been applied in this situation.

And so they weren't entitled to a preliminary injunction because extending a right that applies in another area.

is per se, you don't have, you haven't established that you're a likelihood of success.

So the court ruled that they were not entitled to a preliminary injunction.

So, I mean, that was a very, very strong opinion.

And I think maybe it gave the legislature some more incentives like, hey, we've won, so let's go even further.

But what Eric mentioned is very interesting because, you know, I've always said from the criminal justice advocates side, when they push the pendulum too far to the left, the public's not going to stand for it because they're not going to stand for more crime.

They're going to demand public safety.

But when the pendulum swings too far to the right, then I also argue the same thing.

The public's not going to pay for that.

And so we have to find a middle ground.

And I've always argued that leaning on the private industry more is the middle ground.