MacArthur Justice Center Files Lawsuit to Abolish Video Bond Hearings
Update (11/17/2006)
MacArthur Justice Center attorney Locke Bowman filed a putative class action lawsuit seeking to eliminate Cook County’s “video bond court.” The suit contends that the procedure deprives arrestees the rights to due process and effective assistance counsel and is seeking an injunction from a federal court to stop the practice of conducting bond hearings through video.
Since 1999, Cook County consolidated all felony bond hearings. Arrestees now appear before a judge through a closed-circuit television feed. Each court day, 100-150 bond applicants, many represented by an assistant public defender, attend their court hearing via this system. Applicants are held in holding cells and individual hearings last less than 30 seconds.
Because of physical separation and inability to talk to a public defender before the hearing, bond applicants think they have no right to address the court.
“It’s designed for the convenience of judges, sheriffs, and lawyers but to the detriment of the folks whose lives are being affected,” says Locke Bowman legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center.
The case goes back to court for a status hearing on Jan. 9, 2007.
