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From another lawyer I found...Click for source

The issue with a $1 million dollar bond was also mind boggling until now. The arrest warrants were issued by a Justice of the Peace, not a judge! A Justice of the Peace has the authority to hear misdemeanor cases if no jail time is sought and civil cases not exceeding $10,000 (small claims courts). The Justice of the Peace that issued the arrest warrants, Walter H. “Pete” Peterson, is a former Public Safety Trooper with no formal legal training; meaning he is not a judge nor an attorney! While I am no expert on 4th Amendment Illegal Search/Seizure law, I do have 16 years of experience in the law as an attorney, that of course after 3 years of law school and passing the Florida bar exam. I also teach 4th Amendment law at the undergraduate collegiate level, which means I definitely have more experience than Justice Peterson. With that being said, with cases as legally complex as this one, at a minimum, a judge with criminal law experience should have issued the warrants. My original question of what kind of a judge would issue a $1 million bond in these cases was finally answered- NO JUDGE! To have a Justice of the Peace with no formal legal education issue the arrest warrants in a high profile legally complex criminal case, makes a mockery of our legal system. Or, was Justice Peterson chosen because the Waco Police Department knew he would rubber stamp the arrest warrants?

Click for source

TTAG called Reposa. At our request, he sent us this statement: The case in Waco is problematic for several reasons. The first is the unprecedented arrest and detention of American citizens without adequately alleging a violation of the law. The probable cause affidavit filed in all 170 cases is identical with a “fill in the blank” format for the citizen’s name and only alleges that these citizens were at a location where violence led to death, and were wearing patches signifying membership in some motorcycle club. This is a basic militarized attack on a citizens right of free association, and it is for this reason that I am seeking to expedite my client’s release and to remove all of the Judges that have failed to hold the State of Texas to its burden in filing charges and secure for the citizens adequate protections of Due Process. The second major concern is that the factual details which are certainly known are not being released to the public. For instance, the number of shots fired by bikers compared to the number of shots fired by police and the number of deaths attributable to the police are facts that have been established. The Medical examination of all the deceased citizens has been completed, but the results are not available to the public. This of course raises flags about whether there is an attempt to suppress the truth and use the business owned media to distract from the significance of the militarized police operation that was conducted on American soil May 17, 2015.

The guy quoted is a Florida lawyer and (like myself) may not know if there are any variations in practice in the State of Texas.

In most of the country the description of the duties and limits of a JP is correct, but from what I’ve seen here, Texas judges seem to have additional powers and responsibilities in some areas of practice and this may vary by the county.

There’s too much I don’t know except that the bails are abnormally high and the whole legal process I’m seeing in Waco stinks based on the process elsewhere.