Alabama Senate committee rejects bail reform bill that members approved last year

A bill that would have allowed people to win release from pretrial detention by paying a partial amount of a bond died in an Alabama Senate committee on Wednesday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked on HB 42, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, in a tie vote of 5-5. All the Democrats on the committee and committee chair Sen. Will Barfoot, R-Pike Road, voted for the bill. The remaining Republicans on the committee abstained or voted against the measure.

No member offered a reason for their vote except for Sen. Josh Carnley, R-Enterprise, who said he was voting the way he was after speaking with judges and court officials before he cast his vote.

The legislation would have restored three words to the current bail bond statute — “a part of” — to allow judges to order defendants to pay percentage bonds to secure their release from pretrial detention, which was removed when the Legislature enacted the Bail Reform Act of 1993.

“All the bill does is add back three words to the code that were taken out a few years ago when we passed a bail reform bill,” England said to the committee during the meeting Wednesday.

The legislation passed the House with bipartisan support on April 15.

It is one of two bills aimed at changing the state’s bail system, and the only one that the Alabama Bail Bond Association publicly opposed as it made its way through the Legislature.

Chris McNeil, president of the Alabama Bail Bond Association and who owns a bail bond company, suggested that the bill, if enacted, would increase the rates at which defendants failed to appear in court for their cases.

England said that those figures are not a fair comparison.

England filed the same bill during the 2024 legislative session. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the legislation last year but it stalled in the Senate chamber.