Thursday, February 13, 2025
Good Thursday morning. Happy anniversary to my beautiful wife. Four wonderful kids. Law school. Three cities. Five apartments. Two houses. Zero dollars, some more dollars. Mountains and valleys. Tears and fears and belly laughing through the years. A few visits to the gates of hell but together finding each day a closer taste of heaven than the last. Cheers to 91 more.
Get in touch: greg@gregcox.law.
"And this time, we will play hardball on this issue." The Senate Committee on Criminal Justice heard the Senate's priority bail reform legislative package carried by Sen. Joan Huffman (R–SD 17). Those bills are:
- SB 9: Prohibits bail for violent offenders with prior felonies or parole violations.
- SB 40: Prohibits a city or county from giving money to non-profits that pay defendants' bail bonds.
- SB 1047: Requires public safety reports in bail decisions and enhances victim notification.
- SJR 1: Proposes a constitutional amendment requiring the denial of bail for an illegal alien charged with an offense punishable as a felony.
- SJR 5: Proposes a constitutional amendment to allow judges to deny bail outright for violent and sexual offenders.
At the outset of the hearing, the Committee renamed SJR 1 to Jocelyn's Law after Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Houston girl who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by two men who entered the country illegally. This case is largely responsible for the increase in urgency from state leaders, and Gov. Abbott invited Jocelyn's mother, Alexis, to his State of the State Address where he declared this issue an emergency. He became emotional during his remarks then when recounting the case.
