Federal judge asked to halt probation holds in Allegheny County unless constitutional protections put in place

Tate Stanford, 23, was serving two years of probation after pleading guilty to reckless endangerment in March 2022.

Six months later, he was arrested for carrying a gun without a license, possession of marijuana and receiving stolen property.

Although bail was set on the new charges, Stanford was held in Allegheny County Jail on a probation detainer issued by Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani, who presided over his original case.

When Stanford had what is known as a Gagnon 1, or initial probation hearing, he was told by the hearing officer that he could not be released, even though they said they didn’t believe Stanford was a danger to the community.

“They said they couldn’t do anything about it because of who I was supervised by,” Stanford testified on Tuesday at a federal court hearing. “Mariani automatically puts a detainer on you.”

Stanford, who is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression, remains in the county jail, even now, two weeks after the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office withdrew the new charges against him.

He has been in custody for seven months, including two stints in solitary confinement. He’s lost his girlfriend, damaged the relationship with his grandparents, and is unsure if he has anywhere to live when he’s released.

Lawyers representing Stanford and others in a federal lawsuit argued on Tuesday that U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan should issue a preliminary injunction forbidding the use of probation detainers in Allegheny County unless certain procedural safeguards are put in place to ensure that defendants are given due process rights at their Gagnon 1 hearings.

“Just let the hearing officer do their job,” argued attorney Sumayya Saleh, of Civil Rights Corps. “This case is about ensuring people can be heard at that proceeding, because that’s what’s constitutionally required.”

Six people at the jail filed the federal lawsuit in October, naming as defendants: Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos, a criminal division administrative judge; Frank Scherer, the county’s director of adult probation; Common Pleas Judges Anthony M. Mariani and Kelly E. Bigley; Allegheny County Jail Warden Orlando Harper; and probation hearing officers Charlene Christmas, Robert O’Brien, Stephen Esswein and Renawn Harris.

The lawsuit alleged that Mariani and Bigley require probation hearing officers to order mandatory detention for any of their defendants who are accused of a violation.

Attorneys representing the judges argued on Tuesday that people accused of probation violations are represented by attorneys at their hearings, and that they are not entitled to the same due process rights as a defendant not yet convicted of a crime.

“Every plaintiff in this case has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” said attorney Corrie Woods, who represents Mariani.

They asked Ranjan to deny the injunction request.

The parties are expected to file briefs on the issue, and a decision isn’t expected for several weeks.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Dr. Autumn Redcross, founding director of the Abolitionist Law Center’s Courtwatch program, testified that she has observed hundreds of Gagnon 1 hearings and has volunteers in the program who have watched more and collected data from them.

At the hearings, the person accused of the probation violation is typically represented by a public defender, and they appear before a hearing officer — who works for probation. There is no judge or prosecutor.

“They happen really fast,” Redcross said. “I’m talking between two and five minutes.

“There were very few whose detainers were lifted.”

Redcross said she heard hearing officers say repeatedly during the proceedings that if the person on probation was under the supervision of Bigley or Mariani, they could not lift their detainer.

“‘This is their case, and I’m not at liberty to make a decision on this,’” she recalled the officers saying. “The new charges seemed to be reason enough to be held.”

Often, Redcross testified, the defendants would try to speak on their own behalf.

“I felt that people were not being listened to,” she said.

Saleh argued that the Gagnon 1 hearings offer no individualized assessment.

“Hearing officers, essentially, throw up their hands and say ‘there’s nothing we can do for you.’”

She said that Bigley and Mariani have “categorical no release policies.

“It is institutional knowledge that Mariani doesn’t want hearing officers lifting detainers,” Saleh said.

She cited statistics that show that for Mariani, only 6% of those probationers initially detained under his supervision get released. For Bigley, that number, she said, is just 3.7%.

But Woods, who represents Mariani, said that’s not the case.

“There is no no-lift policy,” he said. “There appears to be a don’t-automatically-lift-my-detainer preference.”

Woods told Ranjan that there is no constitutional presumption of innocence in a probation violation.

During his questioning of Stanford, Woods repeatedly went back to the underlying charges against him.

In Stanford’s case, his initial charges stemmed from him being involved in a gunfight on a public street while buying marijuana. He fired an automatic weapon, although no one was hurt.

Stanford was then rearrested for having a gun.

“The court has the authority to say, ‘holy smokes, this isn’t working. We have to hold you until we sort this out,’” Woods said.

Attorney Michael Daly, who represents Bigley and Rangos and the probation officers, agreed with Woods that there is no blanket policy prohibiting the hearing officers from lifting those judges’ detainers.

“While their percentages are lower, there are recommended lifts on them,” he said. ”It’s not, like, zero.”

As of April 4, Daly said, there were about 10,000 people on probation in Allegheny County.

Of those, 2,300 people had new charges pending, he said.

Of those, 678 were being held in jail on a probation detainer.

That means that the vast majority of those with new charges are not detained, Daly said.

He argued to the court that those detained are represented by an attorney at their Gagnon 1 hearings, and that they can ask for an additional detention hearing with their supervising judge.

“This notion defendants aren’t being allowed to speak isn’t borne out by the evidence,” he said.