Lawsuit claims Ravalli County pretrial program charges hundreds without due process

Opening statements began Monday morning in a trial for a lawsuit over pretrial supervision fees in Ravalli County, disputing whether the county is violating the due process rights of poorer residents by charging them high monitoring fees to stay out of jail.

The case is being tried in Missoula's federal court before U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen.

When a defendant is given a bail amount they have to pay to be released from jail, judges will often order other conditions, like regular drug testing and ankle bracelets. In Ravalli County, that cost falls on the defendant to pay for those services.

In the class-action lawsuit, filed in 2021 by D.C.-based law firm Equal Justice Under Law on behalf of their Ravalli County clients, plaintiffs allege these fees reach hundreds of dollars every month, with no options for waivers or reductions. When people can't pay, the lawsuit alleges, their bail may be revoked.

In his opening statements for the plaintiffs he represents, Equal Justice Under Law Director Phil Telfeyan said by definition, people in the pretrial service program haven't been convicted of the crime they're accused of, adding while they have the ability to appeal or argue the conditions they're given by the judge, they don't have the opportunity to appeal the cost of those conditions. Telfeyan said that some of the plaintiffs had been kept in jail even after posting bail because they hadn't paid pretrial fees yet, and that defendants weren't given notice of those fees.

Telfeyan also told the jury the Ravalli pretrial supervision program is run by the sheriff's department, meaning the department that jails people is the same department determining how much they pay. Because the program is self-funded, it relies on pretrial fees and a small grant from the Montana Board of Crime Control, he said. He showed a chart listing fees for some monitoring and testing conditions that appeared to be far more than what the sheriff's office paid for them. For example, the chart listed market price for GPS monitoring at $79, and stated that Ravalli County charges a pretrial defendant $390 for a GPS monitor every month.

"The sheriff's department profits," Telfeyan said. "The more people that they arrest, the more money they make."

In his opening statements, Ravalli County's counsel Mitch Young said pretrial conditions were imposed prior to 2018, when the Ravalli County pretrial program started, but people had to go to private monitoring companies or bail bondsmen for those tests. Young said this resulted in low accountability and ineffective monitoring, so the sheriff's department got authorization from the county commissioners to start the pretrial program on the condition that it be self-funded.

"The sheriff's office is not required to provide these services," Young said.

Young said the fees were reasonable, given the sheriff's office needed to purchase expensive equipment for monitoring and pay the salaries of pretrial staff. He also said that people in the program had the opportunity to address their bond conditions at their initial appearances or arraignments, and that failure to pay wasn't grounds for an arrest.

"People are simply not arrested if they show up and say 'I can't pay for my test,'" Young said. "What the plaintiffs have proposed to you is to a large extent a completely hypothetical case."

Telfeyan described some of the plaintiffs in the case: a grandmother who said she was sent back to jail after being unable to pay for a test. A single mom who said she paid over $500 a month for three months while waiting for a blood test that completely exonerated her of a DUI. A man who said he pleaded guilty to a charge he wanted to fight because he couldn't afford the pretrial fees anymore.

And a man paying $1,073 every month to Ravalli County out of his $1,100 monthly Social Security check, leaving him only $27 to live on every month, Telfeyan said.

"He's become homeless for the first time in his life at 71 years old," Telfeyan added.

There's no judicial oversight over these fee amounts, Telfeyan said. These fees also lack any of the legal protections given to bail costs, such as the guarantee that bail will be a one-time charge that's returned to the person paying, Telfeyan said.

The plaintiffs are seeking a return of the fees they've paid, which adds up to about $5,000, and a declaration that Ravalli County is violating due process.

Young said the pretrial fees are authorized under Montana law and have adequate due process protections. He said that due process burdens become less and less as the deprivation goes down the line from life to liberty to property.

"Property, well, that generally doesn't take that much process," Young said. "It doesn't require the same panoply of protections as some of the more grievous deprivation."

Young also called into question the stories of Telfeyan's planned witnesses, saying two of them were arrested for drug use or damaging monitoring equipment, not inability to afford their test.

The trial is set to continue through the end of this week.