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THURSDAY on The Source Republicans and Democrats agree: Texas bail system is flawed and changes should be made. But they have very different ideas about what kinds of reforms are needed. What s the latest on efforts to change Texas bail laws?
Bail reform didn t make it through the regular legislative session, but was revived as one of Gov. Greg Abbott s priority items for the ongoing special session. GOP-backed bail bills were approved by House and Senate committees in early July, but have stalled since a group of House Democrats fled the state to block the passage of voting legislation.
Similar to those that failed in the regular session, special session GOP bail bills would keep more people who have been accused but not convicted of violent or sexual crimes in jail unless they had enough cash to bond out; expand the list of offenses for which defendants may not be released on cashless personal bonds; and restrict charitable groups’ ability to pay to get criminal defe
Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images
Originally published on April 27, 2021 3:48 pm
One week ago, people celebrated in the streets of Minneapolis as a judge read the guilty verdicts in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted of murdering George Floyd.
In the days since, the Justice Department announced it would investigate whether the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, where Breonna Taylor was killed by police, engage in a pattern or practice of discrimination or excessive force.
But even as advocates and family members of those killed by police welcomed those developments, they said the need for structural change to policing has not disappeared a point underscored, they said, by the police killings of Black people during and since the Chauvin trial in Brooklyn Center, Minn., Columbus, Ohio, and Elizabeth City, N.C.
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Rowena Jesse, 62, touches a mural of George Floyd in Houston’s Third Ward on April 20, 2021, after Minnesota Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of his murder.
Several successor bills to House Bill 88 have advanced to the Senate, but they do not include one significant part of the original bill – limiting qualified immunity for police officers.
Nearly one year after the killing of George Floyd, a bill in the Texas Legislature commemorating him now survives in pieces.
But a core piece of the George Floyd Act limiting qualified immunity for police is effectively done.
State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, is the author of the original George Floyd Act, officially designated
Elaine Maestas remembers her sister, Elisha Lucero, going out of her way to help people.
“Even if it was like the last of her money, the last 20 dollars, and she knew you needed gas to get to work, didn t matter if you were a friend, a family member or somebody that she just met, she would help you out,” Maestas said.
Lucero was a pillar for her family. She was a loving aunt to Maestas’s children and a caregiver for her father when he became ill. But after she got in a car accident, Maestas said, “we really noticed a drastic, drastic change – that she was starting to not really be herself.”
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