An Austin lawyer says fine-only offenses are simply ways to generate revenue for governments.
At the same time, they create scenarios that can lead to disaster, according to attorney Tony McDonald.
“This line about how fine-only offenses are a ‘tool in the toolbox’ exposes everything we need to know about them,” McDonald told SE Texas News. “Even advocates for them can’t justify them based on their stated purpose. They have to say that they’re a means to a larger end. But they are not.
“They are just random, regressive taxes that create potentially dangerous interactions between the public and law enforcement. If someone is actually disturbing the peace, or endangering others, they should be charged with a real crime and dealt with accordingly. There are plenty of ‘tools in the toolbox’ to deal with real offenses. We don’t need to nickel and dime people, and then end up jailing them if they can’t pay.”
State law says Class C misdemeanor offenses are punishable by a fine only. But some who are charged spend hours, even days in jails.
The arrests affect a disproportionate number of people who are minorities or part of the working poor. They often struggle to pay fines and languish in jail.
Two legislators, state Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) and state Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas), sponsored the George Floyd Act, which calls for several changes in the legal system, including ending arrests for crimes that carry fines of $100 or less.
The act was named for Floyd, who died in the custody of Minneapolis police officers May 25. A video of his death, with an officer holding a knee to his neck, sparked riots and protests across the country last summer.
A University of Houston study shows the act has widespread support.
“The George Floyd Act criminal justice reform is supported by 72% of Texans, with 52% strongly supporting it,” according to the report from the university's Hobby School of Public Affairs. “The act enjoys broad majority support across gender, racial/ethnic, and generational sub-groups, with only one of 11 sub-groups not supporting it by a substantial majority. The exception is Republicans, among whom, however, 43% support the passage of the act."
The study also found that 74% of Texans support ending arrests for fine-only offenses.
The reality is that although these violations are supposed to only carry a fine, tens of thousands of Texans are arrested for them. A pair of high-profile arrests spurred talk of reform.
Dillon Puente was arrested in 2020 after declining to permit a search of his car. His father, who recorded the police encounter, was pepper-sprayed and arrested. Dillon Puente paid a fine. Charges against his father were dropped and the Keller Police Department officer was demoted.
Sandra Bland, a black woman jailed in 2015 after a routine traffic stop escalated, was found dead in a Waller County Jail cell. Bland suffered from mental health issues and depression and been held for three days when she was found dead. It led to the passage of the Sandra Bland Act in 2017, which called for jail reforms and improved staff training.
Jailing people, even for a relatively short period of time, can put them in severe jeopardy, according to a 2017 University of California, Irvine study.
“For the first time, our research documents the significant association between arrest and mental health issues,” said lead author Naomi Sugie, an assistant professor of criminology, law and society. “Arrested people face social stigma, feelings of powerlessness and alienation, time-consuming bureaucratic processes and uncertainty about the future – all of which stress mental health.”
There are other costs as well. When these arrests are made, often as the result of a traffic stop, police officers and support staff devote their time to running the person through the legal process. The expense is in the millions.
Even the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t slow such arrests considerably, despite a sharp decline in vehicles on the road. A report showed more than 40,000 Texans were arrested for fine-only offenses in 2020.
McDonald, who earned undergraduate degrees in economics and government from The University of Texas at Austin before attending University of Texas School of Law, is licensed to practice law by the Texas Supreme Court and is admitted to practice in the Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Western U.S. District Courts of Texas as well as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
He opened his law office in June 2013.
McDonald said it’s revealing to study the terms in discussing police services.
“Police are still technically called 'peace officers' because their job is to keep the peace,” he said. “But they are now more commonly called 'law enforcement' because they go around arbitrarily enforcing often-times arbitrary laws. Out of respect for them and for citizens we should get them back to doing their job – keeping the peace – and eliminate all the myriad of ‘offenses’ that in reality offend no one.”