Bond brawl brewing

Brunswick County Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Ola Lewis is butting heads with twin brother prosecutors over their push to keep accused heroin and fentanyl traffickers locked up under $1 million bonds.

Lewis, who is receiving treatment for liver cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, balked after seeing coverage of prosecutors Ben David and Jon David standing aboard the Battleship North Carolina to announce their high bond initiative.

“If you are peddling poison for profit in this five-county region, you need to know that the cost of business just went up dramatically,” Ben David, district attorney for New Hanover County, said during the press conference.

“We will be taking an aggressive stance on this issue in order to save lives,” added his brother Jon David, district attorney for Brunswick County.

Lewis was not impressed. She said in an interview that the Davids, who preside over districts on either side of the Cape Fear River, never talked with her about their initiative, which she said would not be implemented in her district.  

“I can share that with you emphatically. In my humble opinion, it’s unconstitutional. I respectfully say that I would hope that a DA would see that,” she said, adding that law enforcement officials in her region understand that bond amounts should not be punitive.  

Jon David did not respond to an interview request. Ben David did.

“To be clear, we never said judges have to do this,” he said. “We were advising law enforcement to ask for this and instructing our assistant DAs to back it up in the courtroom.”

He also dismissed Lewis’ assertion that what he and his brother were doing was unconstitutional: “I read the same constitution and I completely disagree.”  

Shortly after Lewis spoke out about the Davids’ plan, Jon David’s office issued a news release announcing that a district court judge in Brunswick had ordered three defendants accused of trafficking heroin held on $1 million bonds.

Reacting to the news, Lewis stressed that bonds were being set in her district on a case-by-case basis.

“There is NO blanket policy in effect!!” she wrote in a follow-up email.