It’s always admirable when a lawyer works to free a single person from prison who shouldn’t be there. But Neal Manne just won a monumental ruling from a Houston federal judge that will release thousands of people jailed for minor offenses who are stuck behind bars for no other reason than they are poor.
The recent decision by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal found that the bail system used in Harris County violated the due process and equal protection rights of indigent people arrested for minor offenses. Her decision emphasizes that Texas’ largest county detains 40 percent of people who are arrested for misdemeanor offenses such as driving without a license and that poor people are often jailed for days and weeks at a time because they can’t pay for a bond to secure their appearance in court.
