by David M. Reutter

There’s something rotten with bail decisions in Prince George’s County, but as of March 29, 2024, the federal court for the District of Maryland isn’t going to do anything about it. That was the date it granted Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings and closed a case filed by county pretrial detainees challenging the way their release from jail is handled.

As PLN reported, a group of pretrial detainees filed suit in July 2022, alleging that county judges “abdicated their constitutional duty” during bond reviews by deferring to the county jail’s pretrial services program (PSP) to determine whether a defendant is released to await trial. As a result, the suit alleged, those refused release face an opaque bureaucracy to challenge that decision, and even those deemed entitled to release often languish in jail for weeks or months waiting for PSP to make a determination. [See: PLN, Sep. 2023, p.59.]

This Orwellian nightmare “starts like it does most everywhere,” as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit noted in its most recent review of the case: After an arrest, there’s a first appearance where a magistrate decides “whether the arrestee should be released on personal recognizance, released subject to conditions (including a bond), or committed (i.e., detained).” Then, the Court continued, “if the arrestee is not immediately released, we move on to phase two: a bail review hearing before a county judge.” The arrestee, now a detainee of the local jail, is entitled to counsel, who can make arguments and present evidence for him. The judge may also consider a “pretrial fact intake sheet” prepared by the County Department of Corrections (DOC).

But at this point, Plaintiffs said, the process wanders into a legal Twilight Zone. Judges issuing a commitment order with the option of release, with or without bond, add that it is “subject to” a “condition”: pretrial release by PSP. The language of this “condition” varies; sometimes it is called “court ordered pre-trial release” or “PR” or “PTR,” though sometimes it is described as a pretrial release “option.” The detainees argued that this creates an extra-judicial hurdle to their release from jail, one that violated their due process rights by allowing PSP to determine “whether a detainee qualifies for release under its own program.” Dangerousness and flight risk are assessed, but crucially there is no judge involved. “The process can take months,” the Fourth Circuit noted, and “[i]n the end, a detainee may never hear anything at all” from PSP.

That’s also about how quickly this case moved for Plaintiffs, who waited eight months for U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte to rule on their preliminary injunction motion—an extraordinarily long time for an emergency request, their attorneys argued. When he did rule, the judge denied the motion in a one-paragraph order. Plaintiffs appealed, and on November 15, 2023, the Fourth Circuit found error in that. Pointing to Mayo v. Lakeland Highlands Canning Co., 309 U.S. 310 (1940), the Court said that Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a) requires a court “granting or refusing” a preliminary injunction to “state the findings and conclusions of law that support its action.” Accordingly, the district court’s order was reversed and the case was remanded. See: Frazier v. Prince George’s Cty., 86 F.4th 537 (4th Cir. 2023).

On remand, Judge Messitte moved much more quickly: A week later, on November 23, 2023, he again denied Plaintiffs’ injunction request, this time expounding on his reasons. First, he refused to burden the federal district court with the responsibility to review all state court pretrial release decisions. Moreover, in his view, PSP is not a substitute for a judge’s work but merely an extension of it; therefore the judge didn’t think Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their case, so he didn’t issue an issue a preliminary injunction. See: Butler v. Prince George’s Cty., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 209716 (D. Md.).

That telegraphed the judge’s eventual ruling: Rejecting Plaintiff detainees’ argument that the County created a Frankenstein monster with PSP, he said what Plaintiffs proposed was “to radically restructure” release procedures. In this view, how County judges make release decisions—even, apparently, if they abdicate those decisions to an unaccountable county bureaucracy—is less important than the fact that the judges remain nominally responsible; the decision to involve PSP therefore enjoys absolute judicial immunity. The County, here acting as an arm of the courts, also enjoys quasi-judicial immunity by extension, the district court added. Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings was therefore granted. See: Butler v. Prince George’s Cty., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59112 (D. Md.).

Plaintiffs have again appealed to the Fourth Circuit, and PLN will update developments as they are available. They are represented by attorneys with Civil Rights Corps, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP and the Georgetown University Law School Center for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, all in Washington, D.C. See: Butler v. Prince George’s Cty., USCA (4th Cir.), Case No. 24-01380.

Additional source: Washington Post

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