The Continuing Reformation of Alabama's Municipal Courts, 0518 ALBJ, 79 The Alabama Lawyer 190 (2018)

AuthorT. Brad Bishop and Laura E. Yetter, Judge.
PositionVol. 79 3 Pg. 190

The Continuing Reformation of Alabama's Municipal Courts

Vol. 79 No. 3 Pg. 190

Alabama Bar Lawyer

May, 2018

T. Brad Bishop and Laura E. Yetter, Judge.

"There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has."[1] These are the words of Alabama's own Justice Hugo Black, interpreting the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to require "procedures in criminal trials which allow no invidious discrimination between persons and different groups of persons."[2] Stated another way, the Fourteenth Amendment requires that defendants in criminal proceedings be afforded the same basic procedural protections regardless of their financial status.3 In Bearden v. Georgia, for example, the United States Supreme Court held that before a defendant's probation was revoked for non-payment of a court-ordered fine, the court must inquire into that defendant's ability to pay.4

The Court reasoned that incarcerating an individual for his inability to pay would amount to "punishing a person for his poverty" in a manner "contrary to the fundamental fairness required by the Fourteenth Amendment."5

In spite of these important judicial pronouncements, various municipalities across Alabama have been incarcerating poor defendants for failing to pay court-ordered fines and fees. Many place the blame on the legislature for its drastic cuts to the state's judicial budget.6 By sharply decreasing General Fund contributions to the judicial system and steadily increasing court costs, the legislature places the financial burden to fund judicial operations on the courts themselves.7 Furthermore, although the average citizen believes city courts retain costs assessed against defendants to f inance court operations, generally only a small part of the total amount is retained. For example, in Birmingham's municipal court, a driver's license violation will cost a defendant $220, with only $72.50 going toward the actual court costs, and $147.50 going toward a "State Fee."8 A study assessing the effects of increased court costs, conducted by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARC A), concluded the state's judiciary "has become a collection agency . .. for itself [and] other branches of government," with the majority of money collected from criminal defendants, over 80 percent of whom are believed to qualify as indigent.9 The study further cautioned, "In criminal proceedings, the costs assessed against offenders have risen to a level that can be counterproductive to the ends of justice."10

Alabama's constitutional requirement that the legislature appropriate "adequate and reasonable funds" to the state's judicial system does not extend to the state's municipal courts.11 Instead, the Alabama Code puts the responsibility of funding municipal courts on the cities in which they maintain jurisdiction.[12] The Code unambiguously holds municipalities responsible for providing "appropriate facilities" and "necessary supportive personnel" for their respective municipal courts.13 Despite this statutory mandate, some municipalities still expect their courts to largely fund themselves through fines and fees collected from municipal court offenders.14

In 2016, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) intervened in response to an initiative by the City of Monroeville, proposing the city's municipal court become "self-sufficient" and "make up any funding shortfall by more aggressively targeting those who fail to pay."15 Thus, the proposal advanced the idea that the court should fund its own operations through court-ordered fines and fees.16 Responding to the decline in court-generated revenue, one city councilman speculated that, "[perhaps] police officers were not issuing enough tickets."17 Subsequently, the Monroeville Chief of Police was replaced and a new directive issued requiring police officers to issue at least two tickets per shift.18 Judge Sanchez, the municipal court judge, was also replaced after objecting to the proposition that the municipal court should be required to fund itself.19 According to Judge Sanchez, "To expect a judge to be responsible for a balanced budget... places the judge in conflict with his sworn duty to protect the constitutional rights of citizens."[20] In a letter to the City of Monroeville, SPLC warned that the city would violate state and federal law if it required its municipal court to fund its own operations.[21] SPLC argued that a self-funded court would violate "bedrock principles of constitutional law and judicial ethics," as a judge may feel compelled to find defendants guilty and impose maximum costs in an attempt to secure his court's economic survival.22 Perhaps in an attempt to avoid litigation, SPLC requested that Monroeville pass a resolution in order to "restore confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary and to demonstrate that the city is not improperly using its justice system to raise revenue."23 The City of Monroeville complied with the request, adopting a resolution declaring the city: (1) would fund its municipal court in accordance with state law; (2) would neither require its municipal court to pay for its own expenses nor consider financial consequences to the city when making judicial determinations; and (3) would consider public safety, not quotas or numbers, when directing police to issue tickets.24

When a city comes to rely on court-generated revenue as an essential source of income, the pressure on a municipal court to collect from offenders can take precedence over its obligation to administer justice in an ethical and lawful manner. Such a dynamic not only jeopardizes the rights of defendants, but also the very existence of the municipal court on which the city's budget relies. Such was the case in the City of Harpersville, when in 2013, the city experienced serious budgetary shortfalls as the result of its municipal court's being shut down in the aftermath of a lawsuit against it.25

A small town with a population of about 1,700 residents, Harpersville opted to maintain its own police a nd fire departments rather than contract with neighboring agencies.26 In order to finance these departments, Harpersville depended on the revenue generated by its municipal court.[27] Because the municipality's budget increasingly depended on court-ordered fines and fees, the city needed an efficient, low-cost way to collect amounts owed by offenders.28 To this end, it contracted with Judicial Correction Services (JCS), a for-profit, private probation company used in more than 100 Alabama courts.29 JCS guaranteed that its supervision of probationers was "completely offender-funded" with no expense to taxpayers, and that "[cjourt collections have increased in every community that has made the transition to JCS."30

Private probation companies like JCS that operate on an "offender-funded" basis require probationers to pay the entire costs of probation services rendered.31 In order to turn a profit, a private probation company will charge probationers additional fees, such as an initial "start-up fee" and a monthly "supervision fee."32 The payment of these additional fees becomes a condition of the offender's probation, and failure to pay results in a probation violation.33 When offenders are put on probation simply because they are unable to pay the balance of court costs and fines due at sentencing, this is referred to as "pay-only" probation.34

To illustrate, an offender who could only pay $100 of the $350 in court costs and fines assessed against him at sentencing would be placed on pay-only probation. When his next payment was due, if the offender were only able to put $50 toward his balance, $35-$40 of this payment would be withheld as a supervision fee, with only $10-$15 going toward his outstanding balance. Thus, the poorer an offender is, the longer they are placed on probation and the more they are required to pay.35

In 2012, four Harpersville defendants placed on a pay-only probation scheme initiated a lawsuit in circuit court against the Town of Harpersville challenging the validity of the municipal court's probationary practices.[36] The resulting decision, issued by Circuit Court Judge Hub Harrington, found that the Harpersville Municipal Court had committed numerous violations of the United States Constitution, the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure and state law.37 Admonishing the court's practices, Judge Harrington referred to the municipal court as a modern-day "debtor's prison" and a "judicially sanctioned extortion racket."38 Among the abuses perpetrated by the Harpersville Municipal Court and JCS, the most egregious included: (1) automatically placing defendants on probation with JCS simply because they were unable to pay the entire amount assessed against them at trial; (2) the failure of the municipal court judge to ever make an adjudication, issue a valid sentencing order or hold a hearing regarding a defendant's probation; (3) unlawfully delegating powers to the probation company (e.g., allowing JCS to set court dockets and issue arrest warrants for defendants who failed to appear and/or failed to make payments); (4) incarcerating defendants who failed to make payments without first holding a hearing concerning the defendants ability to pay as required by the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure;39 (5) extending probationary sentences beyond the two-year limit;40 and (6) charging defendants "unconscionable fines and fees"41 that could potentially compound to "thousands upon thousands of dollars."42

Judge Harrington's order placed strict limitations on the Harpersville Municipal Court, requiring the municipal court to secure his permission before it could incarcerate any...

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