Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Judge David Fleisher: When Judges Choose Compassion Over Punishment?
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
Send us a textJudge David Fleischer, who presides over Harris County Criminal Court in Houston, Texas, shares his groundbreaking approaches to criminal justice reform with a focus on mental health and autism awareness.• Reforming the bail system to prevent wealth-based discrimination in courts• Dropping conviction rates from 60% to 25% through bail reform implementation• Creating court environments where defendants with mental health issues receive compassion and understanding• Livestreaming court proceedings to increase transparency and public education• Showing patience when working with defendants who have autism or mental health challenges• Treating every defendant as a whole person deserving of both accountability and support• Balancing public safety concerns with the need for rehabilitation and intervention• Understanding how untreated mental health issues often lead to criminal behavior• Providing resources to help defendants address underlying issues rather than just punishing them• Demonstrating how transparency in courtrooms creates positive ripple effects throughout communitiesTell everyone everywhere about Why Not Me? The World, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Judge David Fleischer and what is his role?
I'm happy to be here. You know, anytime we can spread awareness, I think it's a great thing. The business that I'm in, it goes hand in hand with mental health. The struggles to get a grip of mental health, because I think it really, a lot of behavior can potentially and unfortunately turn criminal.
Chapter 2: What are the challenges of mental health in the criminal justice system?
if mental health goes unchecked and i don't know how many people realize that i think it's very difficult to realize you know hey i'm bipolar i would imagine that a lot of people don't see it they don't recognize it and it takes something catastrophic for them to finally realize hey i might really need to talk to someone i might really need medication and Sometimes it's too late.
What we do here is we really, and what I'm doing is really trying to get to the heart of the issue to figure out what's going on with everyone and to help them. And we want everybody to leave better than they came.
So as a judge, you have two different points of view. Of course, you've got the prosecutor that's trying to get his point across. Then you have the defense attorney that's trying to get his point of view across. One tries to paint it as the worst thing in the world. The other tries to paint a picture that is not as bad as it looks.
So being the judge, you have to commit at some point to making a decision. What goes into your process after everything is said and done to making that decision so that it can be hopefully good for everyone?
Common sense, right?
Yeah, that sounds good.
Let me get a couple things, bring a couple things to the forefront here that I think it's important that not a lot of people realize.
Okay.
Number one, I'm a judge of one of the misdemeanor courts here in Harris County, which is Houston. In our court, we only deal with misdemeanors class A and class B where they're punishable by up to six months in jail and or a year in jail. I have 16 of my brethren. So there's 16 of us here in Harris County. You have to realize that Houston is a humongous city from one part to the other.
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Chapter 3: How has bail reform changed Harris County courts?
I don't know if you're familiar with bail reform, but what that is is that back in the old days and how it's been since the beginning of time, if you got arrested, you went to jail. And the only way you got out of jail is if you bonded out. Not everybody has that kind of money. So in in 16, a lady filed a lawsuit, a federal lawsuit, because, hey, man, it's not fair what's going on.
So what happened was a lady gets arrested for a suspended license case. She ends up going to jail. Her bond gets set, if I remember correctly, twenty five hundred dollars, which is you would pay 10 percent traditionally, which is two hundred and fifty dollars. You get out and you go fight the case. Not everybody has that kind of money.
So what they would do is they would sit in jail, they would plead guilty, and they would sit there just to get out. They would plead guilty, whether you know you're innocent or not. Even if you can't make that, they charge you with an assault or DWI or whatever it may be. Who's going to sit there in their right mind for four months waiting for evidence to come in? No one's going to do that.
It's easier to plead guilty and get out. Who cares about the consequences?
Yeah, that's a tough situation. So how did you get that changed?
So when we got elected, me and my brother in an 18, you know, the judges before us fought bail reform. I don't know why. Maybe it's the fact that, you know, you're used to a system in place, you know, and people fear change. But I don't know. But when we came in, we said, hey, we agree with bail reform. Bail reform is good from a misdemeanor standpoint.
I don't know about felonies, but misdemeanor, because the idea is when you're in jail, it affects this. It affects this. I don't know if you've ever been to jail, and I don't want you to say yes or no, but it is such an awful place. It can play with your mind. It can play with your psyche. It can make you develop anxiety, mental health problems, and you lose your house, your apartment, cars.
Now, what we've done is we've completely like just turned around a system that's been in place for 150 years on its head. Now, when you get arrested for nonviolent offenses, and of course, there's exceptions to the rule, but by and large, a lot of people are given a personal recognizance bond, a PR bond to get out to fight the case.
The idea is, is that it shouldn't be a wealth based criminal justice system how it's been. What you have now are people being able to be on the outside, fighting their case so they don't have to plead guilty to get out. The conviction rate has dropped from a 60%. I mean, to mind this, a 60% conviction rate in 2016 now to around a 25, 23 to 25% conviction rate. That's staggering.
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Chapter 4: What impact has bail reform had on conviction rates and defendants' lives?
Every person that comes through, I treat like they're my own child. If you do well, we hug you, we congratulate you. Hey, great job because positive reinforcement has really such a, it's so great. Hey, you mess up, you're going to get it as well. We give everybody the expectation of, hey, you know, this is what the expectation is when you come here. If you need help, we will give you help.
All you have to do is ask. But unfortunately, the problem is sometimes they just won't accept it, no matter how much. And I don't know how to go forward.
You've got, let's say you have an autistic person that comes in front of you. They're wired differently in the way they think, the way they process things.
some some will come across that they don't have any empathy about things that they've done when they really do it's just that they don't understand because to them if you cut your finger what's the problem you cut your finger you know so how do you how do we help people like that that don't understand the system they can't really afford
you know, they're going to have to go with a public defender, you know, which I'm not saying anything bad about public defenders, but they just sometimes don't have the time to learn about the affliction that that person they're defending might have. And then they've got the ADA that's trying to prosecute.
How do we go about helping those people so that we can get more empathy towards the person that's really not violent, but they just need help?
I will tell you, I've had quite a number of autistic, in my opinion. I never know because when I'm facing someone in front of me, I don't have information that they may be autistic. At times, you can tell. You know when you're talking to someone. When I have someone that I think... is either special needs, needs a little bit more care. What I do is I shower them with even more love.
I swear to you, I take more time, show a lot more compassion to get them to try to trust me because that's what I want. I want you to open up to me. I want to see what makes you tick. I want to be able to look into you to see how I can help you. Whether it's get you into a sober living facility. You know, we have a mental health docket here that we help a lot of people with as well.
And whether it's getting them into a mental health docket. But what's really sad is that if you look around courts around the country, a lot of people don't see it because you don't get to really see the inner workings of how a court works. And that's why we do what we do.
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Chapter 5: How does the court system handle defendants with autism or mental health issues?
Yeah, that's so true. Now, when it comes to elections, does it get to the point where they just get put in?
If you have enough name recognition, if I was Elvis, Iran for something, you know? But by and large, it's usually not like that. There's very, very few, especially on a judiciary where they become such a name recognition that it's futile to run against them. Most of those are either in Senate or in Congress, not in local judges.
Yeah, that makes sense. Let's say you're running for a judgeship. You put it out there that you're trying to help people. You're not the hanging judge like they see on TV. So many people, if they don't know autism or special needs or mental health, they'll see something, not understand it, and say, put them in jail and throw away the key, which is not right. the right thing to do.
They have to understand that in the real world of the legal system, it's not like the movies or TV. How do you get that across to them so hopefully they understand more about what you do?
It happens all the time. It really does. And the only way is through education and to somehow get it out there that, hey, this is what's going on. This is the reality of the situation. But far, far too many times, a lot of judges get a bad rap when it's certainly just not true. And it's very, very difficult. And a lot of judges get it because of it. It happens all the time.
We have certain things we can say. we have certain things we can't say i can't come back and say something we're not allowed to you know so there are certain things we can we can't and we just have to basically take
Yeah, that's tough, especially where people don't really understand how the legal system actually works. How do we educate them and get them at least headed in the right direction so they can see how the judicial system works and then follow it and hopefully get a better attitude for it moving forward?
That's exactly what we're doing now. Why I live stream is exactly what we're doing now. You...
get a perspective of exactly what's going on it's complete and it's complete transparency you are looking what happens every single day in our court you get to see the good you get to see the bad it is such an educational tool because all too often we get so many people that are just misunderstood and that's when we step in and just try to help yeah i'm so glad that you brought up live streaming that brings up a couple of questions
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Chapter 6: What methods does Judge Fleischer use to show compassion in court?
If you remember back in times of COVID, There were no courts. There were no basic open courts because everybody was homebound. Believe it or not, criminality never ended. People continued to get arrested. Things continued to happen. So courts have to stay open. They have to continue. We were closed. How do you get? Because it's still an open forum. Courts have to stay open.
They have to be an open forum so that anybody has access to it that wants to have access to it. So what we did was we began live streaming. What I did was and what we all did, what we were required to do was to use Zoom as an avenue to be able to communicate with the lawyers. And we would live stream the Zoom proceedings so that the entire world could see. You can go to our court now.
go to my web page, click on the live stream and you can watch. And I've been doing it since we were required to back in 2020. Now, four years later, I continue to do it. It kind of somehow just someone started watching and it just kind of ballooned out of there. The great thing about it is that it provides number one, transparency. Number two, it's a great educational tool, like I've been saying.
However, the bad part is not everybody likes to be on it, right? So they take issue with being thrust into it. And it's the court process. I'm sorry. When you get in trouble, this is what happens. There's consequence to behavior. You have to learn it. Nowadays, anonymity is just gone, right?
In every aspect of life, I would hope that it would possibly be a great deterrent as well, especially for those who, if you're professional, And you're out there. Think before you act. Think before you speak. There is a humongous consequence now.
What kind of results have you seen come from this? You started it because you had to. Now you're keeping it going. And of course, there are people out there that love it. There are people out there that hate it. Sure. How have you seen it change? Or have you seen it change the dynamic within your courtroom since you started doing this?
It doesn't change the dynamic in the courtroom. What I've found, and I'll tell you that I get a lot of comments and people that reach out to me that say, hey, thank you for doing what you're doing. Because of you, I have reached out to a long-lost brother. We've had people that have told us that they've stopped harming themselves.
They've checked into rehab because they see how other people go through things. They empathize with them. They see...
what good can come from it and so they in turn do the same thing i promise you i can't tell you how many people have reached out to us in such a positive way that it has impacted them seeking mental health treatment prevention from suicide really seeking drug treatment i mean i can give you letter after letter email after email but of course there's always a negative as well right to people who don't like it and there's like there's going to be that with every aspect of life
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Chapter 7: Why is court transparency important and how is it implemented?
I've had teachers that have reached out to us that they show it to their classroom. And so I've had other teachers that say, hey, can you come and speak to our class? So it's from that aspect that I think that it's really just a great resource and an educational tool because now our young children and our young adults. They don't think before acting. God knows that. I was 17 and 18 too, right?
But when you see what happens and when you see the consequence, right?
Well, this has been great. So, of course, now this podcast is about autism and mental health and all that. What would you like to say regarding your courtroom and the mental health and autism that you think that people listening to would benefit from hearing?
One of the biggest problems in life, and I think that this can really play in everything, is patience. If people had more patience in every aspect of life, we would just be a better, overall better world. Patience, whether you are being a judge,
You're judging whether you are a district attorney, whether you're on probation and dealing with someone, whether you are talking to someone who has autism and mental health issue and you're trying to get through to them and you're not getting through and you become so agitated that everybody explodes. Just patience has such a virtue.
it's a very difficult trait to have to practice and if everybody did and just took a second to reflect i really think it would help in every aspect of life especially when we're talking about mental health it's not hard i mean i'm sorry it's very difficult dealing with participating and speaking to someone who may have mental health issues or autism it's not easy and if you don't have patience it's even going to be more difficult not only are you going to be frustrated
But the other person is going to be double frustrated because think about them. They're trying to get to you and they have an issue trying to express themselves. Autism is a very tricky thing.
But if you have patience and you show compassion and love toward that person, once they start to trust you, they'll open up and hopefully you will learn how to deal with the autism and how to best communicate and perhaps help them.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's great. Many people have forgotten the definition of the word patience.
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Chapter 8: How do judges balance fairness and compassion in sentencing?
I just truly, I'm sorry and I'll do better next time. He let me go. If I would have been aggressive to him, what would have happened? If you practice that in everyday life with mental health, with autism, when they're trying to combat it to you and you really shower them with love and empathy, I mean, the sky's the limit.
So that's what we do in our court and actually in all of our courts here, right? Not just me, just our entire brethren. And I think that hopefully we'll make a change because that's what we try to do. You know, just try to make everyone better when they leave.
Yeah, that's a great model. And hopefully many people around the country catch on to that.
I don't know. You know, it's one person at a time, one step at a time. And, you know, I'm not going to be here for long, but I hope that we can touch as many lives as you have with your podcast. I mean, you've done it in hundreds of thousands. Me, I'm just one at a time. But, you know, that's all it takes. That's right. One at a time.
You know, when you prevent that one person from committing a criminal act, you're winning. Well, I really appreciate you coming on. This has been great information. Thank you for having me. I'm always willing to help if you ever want to chat. I'm around anytime I can help if you ever want. Just I'm happy to join you.
You know, that's fantastic. I really appreciate it. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymantor.com. Contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show.
One more thing we ask, tell everyone, everywhere, about Why Not Me? The World. The conversations we're having. and the inspiration our guests give to everyone, everywhere, that you are not alone in this world.
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