St. Louis officials accused of pressuring judges to set unreasonably high bail

A public defender in St. Louis has accused Police Chief Sam Dotson and Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce of pressuring judges into setting unreasonably high bail in gun crimes. Mary Fox has filed documents with the court and subpoenas have been issued to both Dotson and Joyce. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Fox has suggested that the police chief and top prosecutor have used social media posts and private meetings to improperly influence judges on the bail issue.[…]

Fox cites social media comments by Joyce, Dotson and Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster in her filings.

“Unfortunately, the bail amounts set in these cases in the 22nd Judicial Circuit are based ... on demands by the Chief of Police and the Circuit Attorney,” she wrote. “Those demands are made not in a court on a case-by-case basis as they should be, but rather in social media, the press and in private confidential meetings to which the defendant and defense counsel are not invited.”

The Post-Dispatch reports that bail is often set at $30,000 for first-time gun crimes, prohibitively high for many defendants. Fox also claims that data and evidence suggests that the bail process for gun crimes is not effective and results in jail time for the innocent.

Fox’s filings say Joyce’s and Dotson’s data on gun crimes show that higher bail settings do not reduce homicides, which have ebbed and flowed since their inception.

Responded Dotson: “I’ve never pigeonholed this discussion into homicides, I’m talking about violence overall and not trying to pick a data set to prove a point.”

Fox also refers to Joyce’s website, which shows 90 of 402 gun cases in 2014, or about 22 percent, did not result in a guilty plea. She says that implies that a “large” number of innocent people have been held on high bail.

This isn't the first time Fox and Joyce have had issues.

Tension between Fox and Joyce has simmered since June, when the public defender filed a motion seeking to compel the prosecutor to stop routinely redacting witness information from police reports provided to defense attorneys.[…]

Fox claimed Joyce “systematically” withholds witness information without seeking protective orders to authorize it. “These practices then necessitate the continuous creation and litigation of motions to compel such as this one, which in the aggregate are unnecessarily burdensome to defense counsel and the courts[.]”