Housing Activists Protest Excessive Bonds

Thirteen local housing rights activists have filed a complaint with the Judges of General Sessions Court, asking them to discipline Bond Court Commissioner Tom Nelson for setting excessive bonds for them, following their arrest on March 21, 2007. The thirteen activists were arrested at the Metro Courthouse Public Square during an all-night vigil asking Mayor Purcell and the Metro Council to provide funding for two-hundred new units of housing for homeless people. They were charged with criminal trespass after they refused police orders to leave the Square at an 11:00 p.m. closing time set by the Parks Department.


When they were brought to individual bond hearings, Commissioner Nelson arbitrarily set the bond for each of the local defendants at $2000 cash, and $5000 for one
defendant visiting from Philadelphia. He refused to respond to arguments and requests from some of the defendants who tried to explain why they qualified for the Courts’ pre-trial release program, which allows many misdemeanor offense defendants to be released on their signatures, without posting any cash bail.

The thirteen complainants contend that Commissioner Nelson committed a gross violation of their civil rights under the United States and Tennessee Constitutions, both of which provide that, “ Excessive bail shall not be required.” In their complaint, sent to the Judges of General Sessions Court on April 6, they say:

“It’s an accepted principle of law, as we understand it, that the purpose of bond is only to insure the defendants’ appearance for trial, and if necessary to protect the public from dangerous defendants. There was absolutely no basis for the Commissioner to believe that any of these defendants would not return for hearings and trial, and he made absolutely no effort to ascertain whether we were likely to do so.”

They ask the Judges to reprimand or suspend Commissioner Nelson, and not to renew his appointment at the end of his one year term.

After the defendants spent ten hours in jail at the Criminal Justice Center, General Sessions Judge John Aaron Holt dismissed the charges against them, ruling that they acted within their Constitutional right to assemble for peaceable protest, and there was no legal basis for the arrests.

The thirteen say that they are filing the complaint not for their own sake, but for the sake of other defendants who may be subjected to excessive bond requirements, improperly set by Commissioner Nelson in a similar manner.