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…