This story was produced in partnership with KOSU. Ethan Corey, research and projects editor at The Appeal, contributed to this report.
What to Know
- Tulsa and Canadian counties made changes to similar bail systems after civil rights lawsuits.
- Oklahoma County public defenders stopped attending some hearings after concluding they could not effectively represent clients.
- Some defendants are unable to afford even $50 to pay a bondsman.
There were 60 cases to be heard on a busy May morning in Judge Thomas Riesen’s courtroom. Detention officers at the nearby Oklahoma County jail roamed from floor to floor with a tablet or iPhone for brief virtual hearings as the judge read aloud each of the detainees’ charges and set bail.
Riesen spoke to the detainees via video from his fifth-floor courtroom in downtown Oklahoma City, about half a mile from the county jail. Most of the hearings lasted roughly a minute. Some were as quick as 20 seconds.
Many detainees at the Oklahoma County jail are classified in county records as homeless and are being held on nonviolent charges like possession of drug paraphernalia, trespassing and public intoxication. They wait up to two days in jail to see a judge if they can’t afford to pay bail or a bondsman, and even longer if they were arrested over the weekend.
A public defender normally sits in the courtroom, but detainees don’t get a chance to talk to the attorney about their case or ability to pay bail before the video hearings. The jail often doesn’t have enough staff or private meeting rooms to accommodate attorneys coming in on short notice to speak with defendants.
“We don’t have a lot of those missing pieces,” said Brigitte Biffle, chief public defender for Oklahoma County. “We kind of are arguing with our hands tied behind our back.”
A detention officer slid the tablet to a detainee through the food slot in a jail cell door during one May hearing The Frontier and KOSU observed. Another detainee pressed his ear against his cell door window to hear the judge. In a few cases, detainees relied on a detention officer to translate Riesen’s rulings into Spanish.
The Eighth Amendment bans excessive bail. But judges can take factors, including public safety and whether a person is a flight risk, into account and can raise or lower bonds as they see fit.
When setting bail, Riesen, who handles initial hearings for defendants in custody, told reporters he only “sometimes” asks defendants questions about their financial ability to pay, but it’s not a standard practice. He instead relies heavily on the county’s predetermined bond schedule, which sets standardized bail amounts for most criminal charges.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that detainees have a constitutional right to individualized hearings in which a judge asks about how likely they are to show up to court, financial circumstances and other factors that could affect their ability to post bail. But public defenders say that isn’t happening in Oklahoma County. Two other counties in the state have already been the target of civil rights lawsuits over similar practices.
Tamala Bridge, an assistant public defender, said she rarely has the opportunity to ask defendants questions during the video hearings. Many times, Bridge said she can’t hear the defendants on the courtroom’s small video screen as they speak into the tablet from jail.
“It’s hard for me to watch every day the injustice that happens in that courtroom,” said Bridge, who has attended hearings in Riesen’s courtroom since January.
Moving through an average of 320 cases a week, Riesen doesn’t believe the quick, virtual hearings are a problem. He says he has to hurry through each case to be done with the docket by 1:30 p.m. when another judge needs the courtroom, which doesn’t give him time to ask each defendant individualized questions.
“We’ve got good public defenders here,” Riesen told reporters after a hearing on May 6. “If somebody thought they weren’t getting due process, we’d hear about it.”
Biffle stopped sending attorneys to the hearings in June. Her attorneys had reached a breaking point, Biffle said, and this was a last-ditch attempt at pressuring the system to change.
Riesen almost always goes along with the bond amount that an assistant district attorney advocates for, even if the public defender makes a compelling argument against it, Biffle wrote in an email to the county’s presiding judge and the district attorney.
“I am at a loss,” Biffle wrote in the email. “Our efforts are futile.”
The Frontier and KOSU called and emailed Riesen’s office, but did not receive a response.
As little as $50 stands between some and freedom
Many people who remain in jail because they can’t afford bail also lack permanent housing. People experiencing homelessness made up around 12% of arrests brought to the Oklahoma County jail between 2020 and July of 2025, according to a data analysis by The Frontier, KOSU and The Appeal.
Data shows most unhoused detainees at the Oklahoma County jail during that time were held on nonviolent charges. The top three charges for people who self-identified as experiencing homelessness in Oklahoma County were drug offenses, trespassing and larceny, according to the news outlets’ analysis of jail data.
Unhoused people booked into the Oklahoma County jail are detained up to twice as long on average as those with housing, according to a population report from the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council.
During the hearings, Riesen set some defendants’ bail as high as $10,000. They would need to pay a bondsman $1,000 to be released from jail.
“This court has said at their initial appearance that they’re not so dangerous that $1,000 won’t do the trick, right? But they’re still being detained because they can’t come up with it,” said Ryan Sullivan, the first assistant public defender in Oklahoma County.
A program in Oklahoma County releases and monitors people before trial who can’t afford bail and helps them make their court appearances, but prosecutors try to block most detainees from participating, The Frontier and KOSU previously reported. The jail holds around 1,500 inmates daily, and about 90% of them, on average, haven’t been convicted of their charges.
Bail is set as low as $500 and $750 respectively for charges like possession of drug paraphernalia or trespassing, which are common reasons for arrest among people who lack permanent housing. For a $500 bond, they would need just $50 to pay a bondsman and be released from jail, but even that amount can be insurmountable for those without income, Bridge said.
Oklahoma City pays the county a little over $177 per person booked into the jail on a municipal charge, and a little over $77 per day thereafter. For state charges, there’s a $192 booking fee and a $66 daily incarceration fee. If a defendant is found guilty, they’re responsible for paying their incarceration costs. Otherwise, the expense falls to taxpayers.
It costs Oklahoma County over $33 million a year to operate the jail, which earlier this year was struggling with a budget deficit and the prospect of laying off half its staff. Over 60 people have died at the Oklahoma County jail since 2020, making the detention center one of the deadliest in the country.
“The less people that we can bring in here, the better it is for everyone,” said Mark Opgrande, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma County jail.
Civil rights lawsuits target cash bail and lack of individualized hearings
Judges have ordered or approved changes to bail systems in Tulsa and Canadian Counties after civil rights lawsuits. Efforts at the Legislature to provide Oklahoma County with additional funding to avoid a similar lawsuit have so far failed.
A federal judge ruled in 2024 that Tulsa County’s bail system was unconstitutional because it lacked meaningful and timely hearings to determine whether defendants need to be kept in jail. Defendants appeared by video from a crowded room at the jail and weren’t given an opportunity to consult privately with a public defender, the federal judge wrote. Judges routinely told defendants not to talk about their case during the hearings and made bail determinations quickly, without explanation.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Friot concluded that while the county has a legitimate interest in community safety, the legal process should “leave little room for a system in which the process, itself, becomes the punishment.” Friot ruled in May that Tulsa County cannot legally detain people unless they receive individualized hearings. Those hearings should happen within 48 hours of arrest, he ruled previously.
Tulsa County officials are appealing the ruling. Settlement talks are also ongoing, said Doug Wilson, an assistant district attorney in Tulsa County.
Hayley Horowitz, an attorney and director at the nonprofit Still She Rises, represents detainees who can’t afford bail in the lawsuit. She said Tulsa County has made substantial reforms to bail hearings since the lawsuit was filed in 2018. Still, Horowitz said the case is about more than individualized hearings. She has filed an appeal, arguing the judge’s decision doesn’t go far enough to protect the constitutional rights of people who can’t afford bail.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a similar lawsuit against Canadian County in 2019. People were being held in the county jail for weeks without a meaningful hearing, the lawsuit claimed.
Canadian County initial hearings were virtual, quick and often closed to the public, said Megan Lambert, an ACLU lawyer on the Canadian County case. Defendants had no way to privately consult with legal counsel, present evidence or call on a witness, Lambert said. And judges rarely considered an individual’s circumstances or ability to afford bail.
“That does not come close to fulfilling the promise of due process that we have under the U.S. Constitution,” Lambert said.
The ACLU and its partners in the lawsuit reached an agreement with Canadian County court leadership in August 2025 to end the practice of jailing people because they can’t afford bail. Under the agreement, which a federal judge approved in January, Canadian County judges must determine a person’s ability to pay before setting bail.
The ACLU has filed similar lawsuits in Texas and Tennessee, which are ongoing.
Canadian County has made changes to comply with the agreement, including evaluating a person’s individual circumstances when setting their bail. Only minor modifications remain to be made for court officials to be in full compliance with the order, Lambert said. She said she is optimistic that Canadian County will resolve those issues.
Fearing similar legal action in other counties, Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, introduced Senate Bill 1381 at the Oklahoma Legislature this year, but it didn’t pass.
The bill would have enacted reforms across the state that were mandated in Tulsa and Canadian counties after the lawsuits, including individualized bail hearings within 48 hours of arrest on weekdays and 72 hours on weekends or holidays to determine whether a detainee could be safely released.
But lawmakers balked at the estimated $21 million price tag, especially since Gov. Kevin Stitt had directed lawmakers and state agencies to keep budgets flat.
When lawmakers scaled back the bill to a pilot program in Oklahoma County that would have cost $2.3 million, the measure received bipartisan support in the Senate. But the bill didn’t get a hearing in the House.
“I think that the Legislature is going to have to realize at some point to have a fair, just and efficient justice system, the funding is going to have to come from the citizens,” Rader said.
The Oklahoma County public defender and district attorney supported the bill, which would have provided funding for each to hire additional staff.
Without more state funding, Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna said courts don’t have the time or manpower to hold individualized detention hearings for each defendant. With more than 50 cases to be heard on a given day, more judges are needed to ensure each defendant’s hearing lasts more than a few minutes, she said.
“We know what the Constitution requires,” Behenna said. “But you can’t make that happen when you don’t have sufficient appropriations.”
Behenna said she and public defenders were depending on Rader’s bill.
“I was trying to explain to the House, you’re going to get us sued, you’re going to get Oklahoma County sued,” Behenna said. “We know we need to be doing this. Just give us the money to do it properly, that’s all I’m asking. Just give me the money to do it properly.”
Biffle, the chief public defender, senses an impending lawsuit, too.
“That’s absolutely where we’re headed,” she said. “The question is just when?”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Maddy Keyes interned for The Frontier and then joined the outlet in 2024 after graduating from the University of Oklahoma. Email her at Maddy@readfrontier.com
